Brazil chooses ‘The Secret Agent’ for Oscar bid

Brazil has once again drawn on its authoritarian past in selecting an Oscar hopeful. The Brazilian Film Academy selected Kleber Mendonça Filho’s “The Secret Agent” to represent the country at the 2026 Academy Awards in the Best International Feature Film category. 

Starring Wagner Moura, best known for his role in “Narcos,” the thriller is set in 1977 Recife during Brazil’s military dictatorship. It follows Marcelo, a university professor trying to start over but pulled into a world of surveillance and paranoia. The film won Mendonça Best Director and Moura Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, where critics praised it as a stylish, unsettling portrayal of repression.

Variety‘s Peter Debruge hailed it as a “terrific ’70s thriller” and “dazzling period drama.”