TIFF 2025 Review: ‘The Secret Agent’ is a Brilliant Brazilian Thriller About Identity and Violence

Header Image Source: TIFF // Neon

It’s the 1970s and Brazil is in, as the opening text tells us, ‘a period of mischief.’ Carnival season is in full swing and it seems to have left the nation in a state of madness. Dead bodies lie in the middle of dirt roads and nobody seems to care. A man’s leg has turned up in the stomach of a shark. There’s a cat with two faces. And in the middle of it is Marcelo (Wagner Moura), a mysterious man who is returning to his home city of Recife. All he wants is to reunite with his young son and live the life that has long been denied of him. But this is a time of dictatorship and corruption, and it’s all too common for men like Marcelo to be disappeared.

Kleb

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