‘Secret Agent’ Cinematographer Evgenia Alexandrova on Making a Period Political Thriller in Brazil That Speaks to Our Present Day

Cinematographer Evgenia Alexandrova grew up in Russia under the Putin regime. With her keen understanding of totalitarianism, working with Brazilian Director Kleber Menonca Filho on The Secret Agent was an opportunity she could not pass up. Set in 1977, during the final years of Brazil’s military dictatorship, The Secret Agent follows Marcelo (Wagner Moura), a former teacher on the run due to his political views. The Secret Agent is a noirish political thriller like few others. It’s a patient film, featuring an ordinary protagonist, shot in bright colors, and with a sense of the absurd. Alexandrova’s cinematography is a key component in the movie. The contrast of saturated primary colors against the backdrop of a man desperate to flee the country with his son is unique and even remarkable. 

Alexandrova may have been a long way from home, but she recognized elements of her own story in Marcelo’s. I asked Alexandrova how she connected with her renowned Brazilian director, who had previously gained fame with the film Bacarau.

“The Secret Agent is my second film in Brazil, after Heartless, which was presented in Venice in 2023. Heartless was also produced by Emilie (Lesclaux). Kleber discovered my work, and he really liked the color creation in the film. When he sent me the script and we discussed the images, he told me he wanted to have organic colors. There are many things that he doesn’t like about the cinematography that’s in fashion these days, like how it’s lit or graded.”

Color and tone

Color is a huge factor in The Secret Agent. When we think of thrillers, we tend to think of dark lighting and grim cinematography. Alexandrova’s visuals work against the cliché.

“We wanted to do the complete opposite of that. Just because the story is dark, you don’t need to use dark colors and dramatic music. This is what I call Mickey Mousing, when you just put everything together to try to pull emotion from the audience. I feel that it is much more striking that all of the horrible things coming from the dictatorship were happening in plain daylight. This dissonance between bright and colorful images and the actual horror of what’s happening is what makes it emotional.  The scene when Marcelo (Wagner Moura) learns that he’s being hunted, and he comes out of the cinema, and he sees this carnival on the street, and he just couldn’t help but go dancing as well. This is so Brazilian, like we might die the next day, but tonight is our catharsis.”

“When we were working on the look of the movie, Kleber shared with me a lot of still pictures from that time in Brazil. I saw a lot of reddish undertones. When I developed the look for the film, I was heading in that direction. In the final color grading, we found that it wasn’t very appropriate because it made the whole film look a bit sepia-toned. So we worked much more on color separation in our lab in Berlin and went in a different direction after. I’m the kind of person who doesn’t like to do an image that is too tasteful. I really like when there’s a bit of overexposure, when there are deep shadows. I like it when the colors are present. I like good contrasts. I don’t want to make something too shy. That’s why there are some very bright moments in the film. Also, the lenses we used, the Panavision lenses, which were actually conceived in the ‘70s, have a lot of aberrations, and they’re very imperfect, and that’s exactly what we liked. Sometimes their flares were pretty uncontrollable, or when we’re facing windows, it’s a bit blown out. Kleber and I both like when the techniques and camera are present in the film, so that you feel that it’s a film and that it was made in an artisanal way.”

The Secret Agent is not only a film set in the ‘70s, but also a film that feels bold and daring like movies from the first decade of the post-censorship era. That era of filmmaking was an inspiration to Alexandrova, as well as the two decades that followed.

“Not only from the seventies, but we were very much inspired by newer Hollywood movies, so seventies, eighties, and actually even nineties. Some Spielberg movies as well. We had a lot of fun experimenting with various camera movements and utilizing thematic tools to tell the story. Once again, being shy with the camera is so boring. You really want to give the story life. The film has a 2-hour 45-minute running time. You just want it to be interesting to watch; you don’t want to torture your audience.”

Even simple scenes, like a man entering an office, are shot with fluid, graceful camera movements. I referenced that seemingly mundane sequence to Alexandrova. 

“The scene you’re talking about, he actually enters from afar. And while we’re moving behind the column, we zoom in. It was shot with two cameras and then edited. We changed the shots and we put them together. If you don’t use the cinema tools, then why not write a book?”

The first scene in The Secret Agent, an extended sequence between Marcelo and military police, sets the tone for the film’s patient delivery.

“We shot it over two weeks. It’s a very long scene. We wanted the universe of the film to exist. That the seventies really exist. We wanted to take our time installing this story; that’s why there are so many characters in various locations. It’s not like one location and you are trying to hide that it’s a period drama, and you’re just filming in one direction. We wanted to film almost 360 degrees all the time, and really not be shy with our frame width, so the rhythm of the film is an integral part of it. Some scenes are not completely necessary for the narration, but they make the characters come alive. They make them live through the runtime of the film.”

Absurdism

One of the more remarkable sequences in The Secret Agent is that of the ‘Hairy Leg.’ The ‘hairy leg’ is an urban legend in Brazil about a dismembered limb that comes to life and attacks the population. It’s an almost shocking moment in the film. It’s as if John Carpenter took over the movie for several minutes. 

“The ‘hairy leg’ was one of the most striking scenes for me when I first read the script. I felt it was a log line for the whole film, because obviously it’s a metaphor for police hunting people during a dictatorship. I was born in the Soviet Union, and I know the story of my country before and during the 1950s. I was particularly sensitive to this part of the script because I was familiar with how people used to avoid being censored when discussing sensitive topics. They were using metaphors, and sometimes they were really funny or really absurd. Constraints actually build creativity. So this scene is an illustration of that. We really wanted it to be absurd and funny. So it looks a bit like a comic book. We discussed for so long how we were going to do it, and we did some tests. First, we had somebody dressed in a green costume just jumping on his leg. Then we had a fake leg that we tried to move as well, but we ended up just filming plates; the leg was then integrated into a stop-motion animation in a studio in the Netherlands.”

As bizarre as the scene is, Alexandrova never doubted that it would be effective.

“I always trusted it. Kleber believes in not taking everything too seriously. I think that the film is interesting because it’s not obvious humor. I actually find it very smart and ironic.”

Wagner Moura

The film’s lead, Wagner Moura, has garnered significant Oscar buzz for his portrayal of Marcelo. Marcelo is an ordinary man in extraordinary circumstances. Alexandrova appreciated that aspect of the film, as well as Moura’s attention to detail. 

I operate the camera on set. In France and Brazil, we do that. Wagner is a great professional. He walks on set, and he knows exactly where he needs to stand. He understands the lights. He’s very attentive. But he’s also a very kind person, genuinely personable. The thing about his character is that he’s an ordinary person. The name of the film is The Secret Agent, so we expect it to be about a hero, but that’s the point: that the system could get to anyone, no matter whether you are really politically involved, or you just crossed the path of the wrong person. It’s a beautiful role for Wagner. His character is imperfect in the film, and I remember him having a lot of fun when he finally transformed into the son. It was actually his last day of shooting, and he just had a blast. He completely invented the character’s attitude himself. There are longer takes that tell the background of the character, that he’s gay. He used to be married to a woman, and now he’s married to a man. Wagner created a very different character from his father. 

Inspiration

The Secret Agent pays homage to several films from the 1970s, including The Omen, which serves as a backdrop within a movie theater in The Secret Agent. It’s a clever film-within-a-film move that pays off.

“Kleber wanted to honor the seventies and all of those films that were coming out. I think it’s his own memory of him becoming a cinephile. For these scenes, we drew inspiration from Roma. There is a cinema scene in that film, and they actually shot it without projecting the real movie, and then they integrated it on the screen. We did the same thing, so we had to really think through the lights that were coming from the screen onto the audience. It was a unique challenge.”

It can happen anywhere

One of the most powerful scenes in the film involves Udo Kier as a Holocaust survivor who is forced to expose himself in front of local police, connecting another kind of tyranny an ocean away to the film’s subject matter. 

“That was a funny location, in the sense that it was no longer practical. We were a small crew shooting there, and when someone was going up the staircase, someone else had to go down. We were really super confined. On set, inside the room where the discussion took place, there were only the actors, me, and camera B. We had the whole day to shoot that. We experienced very different levels of emotional involvement with the characters. You can see that the lighting in the scene is very contrasting. That was something that was called for by the location, naturally, but also by the scene, and just the juxtaposition of one character opposing four or five on the other side. This was something we worked on intentionally – his position against everybody else. That’s why it’s one of the best scripts I have ever worked on, because there is always this subtext, this deeper meaning behind what is going on. They talk about how power can make people go crazy and dehumanize others. This film is also about dehumanization.”

Having now spent a significant amount of time in Brazil, Alexandrova addressed the country and its contradictions.

“That’s why I love shooting in Brazil. I fell in love with the country because I quickly felt that it’s a very contradictory place. There is a lot of human warmth there, but there are also problems like internal racism coming from the history of the country, and a big separation of power, a huge discrepancy in incomes, which creates a lot of criminality. This is something that makes experiencing the country much richer when you see the different sides of life and different types of suffering. I think it brings your thoughts and understanding of the world to a different level.”

Late in The Secret Agent, a stunning sequence of violence unfolds, requiring Alexandrova’s camera to follow the shooter and those chasing after him through multiple locations, both interior and exterior. It’s a complicated and daring use of location, emotion, and technique.

“This is an interesting moment in the film because this is, again, about the system. You can be a hunter one day, and in a moment, you become the hunted. We shot that scene in several locations, at least three or four, and with complicated shots. It was challenging and brilliant because we didn’t want to show only the character who was being followed. We actually wanted to show where he goes and describe the city. There is a moment when he walks on the street and enters the padaria, a place where you can get a snack, and it begins with a camera being tilted up to the location. Coming up, coming down, because it was so beautiful. We actually called it Gotham City in our location list. The shots are mixed in between dolly shots, zooms, handheld, all different types of camera movement that come in at precise moments. Sometimes you watch a movie and there is a sequence where somebody’s being followed and it just never stops, especially in a car chase. It’s cool to watch, but come on. We really try to avoid that and to create this tension, but without being repetitive. The music is repetitive, but visually it navigates into very different locations and in different rhythms. It brings the tension, but also captures the attention. The contrast is striking because for the first two-thirds of the film, he’s been hunted, but people are nice. It’s colorful. They drink kashasa, and then it gets real. Then you’re reminded of the reality.”

In the world we currently live in, a story about a regime using force against its people, and dismissing the rule of law seems all the more relevant.

“We actually hoped that it would resonate because the power of cinema is actually talking about these things and making people think about it, because no dictatorship or authoritarian regime came into being all at once. It was always progressive. When a frog gets boiled slowly, it doesn’t feel that it’s getting boiled. Kleber says that some younger generations in Brazil don’t remember or don’t know that there was a dictatorship. I grew up thinking about those topics a lot. One of my favorite films is One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, about a human being rising up against the system. This is something we have to keep in mind. In Europe, there’s been a huge increase in right-wing voters for the past several years. I think the world crucially needs these kinds of films.

This interview was conducted in Charlottesville, Virginia, with the assistance of the Virginia Film Festival. The Secret Agent opens in theaters in limited release on November 26, 2025.