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The Guardian
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Secret Agent review – brilliant Brazilian drama of an academic on the run in the murderous 1970s
Director Kleber Mendonça Filho's new film is set in the Brazilian dictatorship of the 1970s and its visual brilliance, sensual big-city intrigue, shaggy-dog comedy, gruesome lowlife walk-ons and epically languorous mystery combine to create something special. It's about the everyday nastiness of political tyranny, high- and low-level, and with its subject matter and present-day perspective, could be compared with Walter Salles' I'm Still Here. Yet this is more ambitious, more totally complex and elusive. As the movie progressed, I found myself comparing it to Sergio Leone, to Antonioni's The Passenger in its unhurried progress to some terrible violent denouement, to Elmore Leonard via Quentin Tarantino, to Meirelles and Lund's City of God and Alfonso Cuarón's Roma. Wagner Moura plays Marcelo, a man on the run, or preparing to go on the run, driving across the country in a vivid yellow VW Beetle, which irritates the local corrupt cops. He is a widower with a small boy currently being looked after by his late wife's parents; his father-in-law runs a cinema showing, among other things, Jean-Paul Belmondo in Le Magnifique, the trailer calling him 'the Secret Agent'. Marcelo is not exactly a dissident, not precisely a political agitator or really even a leftist, but he does now find it necessary to get out of Brazil with his son. Yet things are not that easy. In a previous life, Marcelo was an a academic working in engineering who found that a minister with private commercial connections was ready to shut down his university department and transfer all its research, with its lucrative industry potential, to a private company in which the minister owned shares. The resulting quarrel results in the minister hiring a couple of gargoyle hitmen, moonlighting from their secret police duties, to whack Marcelo. So Marcelo is spirited away to a safe house in Recife by a mysterious resistance group, with other 'refugees', under the kindly, grandmotherly care of Dona Sebastiana (a wonderful performance from Tânia Maria). And they provide him with work in a government department responsible for issuing ID cards, ironically, considering the fake identity he is now working under. It is here that Marcelo hopes to find information about his late mother in the archive department, and here also that he fatefully makes the acquaintance of a hideously corrupt cop (Robério Diógenes) whose department is using the chaos of carnival to kill people. The local population, already shark-crazy with the release of the film Jaws, are electrified at the news that a shark has been caught with a human leg in its stomach – and the mischievous press spreads urban-myth rumours of a supernatural 'hairy leg' hopping around at night, terrifying people. So the film transforms political violence into black comedy and mass hallucination. This movie, visually and dramatically superb in every way, moves with unhurried confidence across the screen, pausing to savour every bizarre bit of comedy or erotic byway, or note of pathos, on its circuitous path to the violent finale, including an amazing cameo for Udo Kier as a troubled tailor. The Secret Agent doesn't have the imperatives of a conventional thriller and expecting these will cause impatience. It's more novelistic in its way: a movie of character, a showcase for Moura's complex, sympathetic performance – but also the platform for some thrilling, bravura film-making. The Secret Agent screened at the Cannes film festival.
Yahoo
07-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Quannah Chasinghorse, RZA & Fernando Meirelles Team Up For Eco Doc ‘Beautiful Resistance' From UK Indies Make Waves & Pollen
EXCLUSIVE: Indigenous model and actress Quannah Chasinghorse is set to lead documentary Beautiful Resistance (working title), about Indigenous justice and the climate crisis. Chasinghorse, the 22-year-old Alaskan native land defender will be the film's protagonist and executive producer alongside Oscar-nominated City Of God, The Constant Gardner and The Two Popes filmmaker Fernando Meirelles and Grammy-winning Wu-Tang Clan member RZA who is also producing the film's score. More from Deadline Berlinale Co-Pro Pitch Will Have Vatican Crime Story, Kiwi Skateboarder Biopic, Narco Series & Host Of Period Dramas Luis Lomenha & Fernando Meirelles On 'Children Of The Church Steps', Netflix's Brazilian Drama Inspired By Shocking Real Life Events: "The Focus Is The Children's Perspective" Netflix Brazil Greenlights Film Adaptation Of Paulo Coelho's 'The Pilgrimage' And Orders Fernando & Quico Meirelles Miniseries Based On Edyr Augusto Novel 'Pssica' The film, which is aiming for a late 2025 production start, is co-produced by UK duo Sarah Macdonald of Make Waves and Alexander Asen of Pollen, whose previous collaborations include environmental docs The Great Green Wall — which debuted at Venice — and Blue Carbon, which sold to CNN, Canal+ and others. Beautiful Resistance will follow Quannah as she straddles two different worlds: the glamour of high fashion and the urgent fight to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, one of the world's last true wildernesses, from oil drilling and climate destruction. Set against the backdrop of Trump's 'Drill, Baby, Drill' pledge, the project begins as a battle to save her sacred lands but spirals into a global reckoning, spanning Alaska's melting tundra to typhoon-ravaged villages in the Philippines, Louisiana's sacrifice zones, and courtroom battles in New Zealand. Quannah, who previously co-narrated Bad River alongside Edward Norton and featured in hit series Reservation Dogs, is joined on the project her mother, Jody Potts-Joseph, a Han Gwich'in leader and advocate who serves as an executive producer on the film. Executive producers also include serial entrepreneur and Trace Magazine founder Claude Grunitzky, and Philippe de Bourbon. RZA said: 'Hip-hop and activism have always been linked. Whether it's fighting injustice in the streets or fighting for the future of our planet, real culture speaks truth to power. Beautiful Resistance isn't just telling a story—it's standing on the frontline of history.' Quannah Chasinghorse added: 'The most beautiful thing about being raised in the movement, is seeing love be embodied in the most powerful way. Our resistance is fueled by our resilience and ancestral strength, keeping us rooted in culture, and remaining focused in what the mission is. Indigenous peoples worldwide have proven to be stewards of the land for millennia, being the least to contribute to the climate crisis and being the most impacted. Telling these stories, uplifting and including the voices with the lived experiences is crucial to creating solutions. Beautiful Resistance is going to be a beautiful and inspiring journey into the fight for justice.' Best of Deadline 2025 TV Series Renewals: Photo Gallery 2025 Awards Season Calendar: Dates For Tonys, Emmys & More 2025 TV Cancellations: Photo Gallery
