The Secret Agent

Over the last two days, I watched The Secret Agent streaming in Disney+ on my iPad. I am working on finalizing out my Oscar's dance card. The film received four nominations for the upcoming 98th Academy Awards: Best Picture; Best Actor; Best Casting, and; Best International Feature Film.

The Secret Agent is a historical political thriller film written and directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho. It stars Wagner Moura. The supporting cast includes Carlos Francisco, Tânia Maria, Robério Diógenes, Gabriel Leone, Maria Fernanda Cândido, Alice Carvalho, and Udo Kier.

The film follows Armando (Moura), a former technology researcher. Caught in political turmoil, he adopts a false identity while fleeing the country's military dictatorship in 1977. Arriving in Recife during the chaos of Carnival, Armando attempts to reunite with his young son and find safety among a community of political refugees while being hunted by persistent hitmen. The film blends historical tension with surreal elements—including a local urban legend about a sentient severed leg—and uses a present-day framing story.

This marks the second year in a row that a Brazilian film was nominated for Best Picture. In the 98-year history of the Academy Awards, a total of 20 non-English language films have been nominated for Best Picture. For the first 90 years of the award, these nominations were incredibly rare. In just the last few years, the frequency has skyrocketed. Since 2019, there has been a historic surge in non-English language cinema. During this period, 10 foreign-language films have been nominated for Best Picture.

As I said when we started to get a steady stream of Best Picture nominated foreign films with Roma, I feel like I miss some of the nuances of a movie when I am focused on reading the subtitles. Watching The Secret Agent on the smaller iPad screen actually seened to help. Nevertheless, reading subtitles for two hours and forty minutes is a bit of chore. I enjoyed the movie, but don't recommend it unless you are trying to check off a list of Best Picture nominees. It is not going to win Best Picture. While it will probably win Best International Feature Film, I liked It Was Just An Accident better.