Films to Watch #13: The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho, 2025)

Thursday, February 19th – 20:00
Meeting time: 20:00 at LAB111 bar
Film starts: 20:45

For the 13th edition of Films to Watch, we head to LAB111 to see The Secret Agent, the new and highly anticipated film by Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho.

Set in Recife, Brazil, in 1977, during the military dictatorship, the film follows Marcelo (or Armando? or Fernando?) — a man on the run, not because he is a revolutionary or an enemy of the regime, but simply because he looked at the wrong capitalist the wrong way. Suddenly, he becomes a fugitive: a “secret agent” against his will.

Recife is portrayed as a city where power has begun to rot into absurdity. Rules no longer make sense. Authority is arbitrary. Violence is mostly invisible — but everywhere. Carnival crowds flood the streets, sex happens in public spaces, bureaucracy turns into pure theatre, and beneath it all hangs a heavy, suffocating atmosphere of fear. The real terror of The Secret Agent is not in explosions or chases, but in silence, waiting, and collective paralysis.

Mendonça Filho doesn’t make a conventional thriller. This is a loose, hypnotic, experimental film — closer to a fever dream than to a spy movie. It’s a portrait of a society stuck in suspense, where neutrality is impossible and everyone is slowly pulled into the same vortex.

At the same time, the film is filled with nostalgia: pop songs on the radio, 1970s fashion, movie posters, yellow phone booths, echoes of Jaws and The French Connection. Memory, archives, recordings, and lost histories play a central role. The film becomes not just a story about fear, but also about how we remember, what gets erased, and what can never be fully reconstructed.

A haunting, strange, and deeply atmospheric film — one that stays with you long after the credits roll.

### Before the film

We’ll meet at 20:00 at the LAB111 bar for a drink and a chat before heading into the screening at 20:45.

Come for the film.
Stay for the conversation. 🎬🍻