Brazil has selected Kleber Mendonça Filho’s period political thriller The Secret Agent as its contender for the 2026 Oscar in the best international feature category.

Narcos star Wagner Moura stars in the 1970s-set drama, playing a technology expert who gets on the wrong side of Brazil’s military dictatorship and finds himself a target. He returns to his hometown to reunite with his young son and flee the country before hitmen, hired by a corrupt federal official, catch him.

The Secret Agent premiered in competition in Cannes , where Moura won the best actor prize . In a rave review, The Hollywood Reporter ‘s chief film critic David Rooney said the film, which mixes surreal humor with a deeply serious look at the trauma in Brazil’s past, is “both both of a piece with and

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