The Secret Agent is a 2025 Brazilian political drama, written and directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho. For the avoidance of doubt, it is nothing to do with Joseph Conrad’s novel of the same name. It had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May, and was released in the UK last Friday, 20 February.

The film is set in 1977, during the political turmoil of the Brazilian military dictatorship. Corruption is everywhere and life is certainly cheap: under the cover of the annual carnival in Recife, a city about the size of Birmingham, the death toll approaches three figures. Former professor and widower Armando Solimões (Wagner Moura) arrives in the city where his young son, Fernando, has been living with his dead wife’s parents. Whilst by no means a political activist, he has crossed swords with the dictatorship in the form of corrupt Government Minister Henrique Castro Ghirotti (Luciano Chirolli) and there is now a price on his head.

Despite the film’s title, Solimões is no James Bond; he is an ‘ordinary’ academic in an impossible situation; consequently, he is a character to whom we can relate. Informed by former anarcho-communist Dona Sebastiana (Tânia Maria) that his life is in danger and that his name is on a banned-from-travel list, he adopts an alias, Marcelo, and sets about obtaining the necessary false papers to allow him and Fernando to flee the country.

The film is peopled with a colourful cast of characters, beautifully realised, many of whom are crying out to be the heroes of their own films, in particular: the aforementioned Dona Sebastiana, local police chief Euclides (Robério Diógenes), hit-man Augusto Borba (Roney Villela) and his sidekick Bobbi Borba (Gabriel Leone), who happens to be his son. There are numerous subplots, if that is the correct word, including a man-eating shark, a Jewish Holocaust survivor who is mistakenly assumed to be a Nazi fugitive (Udo Kier in his last role), and a murder at a petrol station during a memorable opening sequence. These characters and events are woven together skilfully by Filho to form a picture of life in Brazil in the 1970s and to set the scene for Solimões’ story.

The film has been nominated for four Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Leading Actor for Wagner Moura. However, it has somehow not been nominated for either Best Director or Best Original Screenplay – very strange – one would have thought at least one of those two would be necessary for a Best Picture nomination.

The Secret Agent is a rich, complex, multi-layered film which makes the viewer work hard to understand what is happening and, perhaps more importantly, why it is happening. It runs 161 minutes, although it never drags – it is compulsive viewing: however difficult it is to fathom, one finds oneself desperate to work it out. I think I am just about there, however I plan to go again later this week, because I think I have more to understand, and it is certainly worth the effort.