Kleber Mendonça Filho’s subversive and unique cinematic ride, The Secret Agent, is Brazil’s International Feature Oscar submission. This startling film has collected a slew of accolades this awards season and might just be on course to receive a boatload of Academy Award nominations, including one for Wagner Moura who delivers a complex, layered turn that is easily one of the year’s finest performances.
Moura just won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Drama, a feat that his fellow Brazilian, Fernando Torres, managed last year in the Best Actress in a Drama category for I’m Still Here. And she ended up with a coveted Oscar nomination.
It is quite possible Brazil will strike Oscar gold two years in a row in the International Feature category. The real question is whether Moura can take the prize away from front-runner Timothée Chalamet? He certainly has momentum.
Besides the Golden Globe, Moura picked up the Best Actor Award at Cannes as well as a slew of critic’s association citations including one from the New York Film Critics Circle.
In The Secret Agent, Moura plays Armando, a left-leaning, widowed, university professor on the run from a bigoted government bureaucrat, who’s part of Brazil’s military dictatorship. The bigwig has hired two assassins to go after Marcelo, who is hiding out in Racife, under the alias Marcelo, with other political enemies of the state, thanks to a courageous 77-year-old known as Dona Sebastiana ( a plucky and hilarious Tânia Maria). Meanwhile Armando visits his young son, Fernando (Enzo Nunes) who is being cared for by his thoughtful father-in-law (Carlos Francisco) until Armando/Marcelo can obtain fake passports so he and Fernando can flee the country.
This mesmerizing film takes many twisty turns and Filho deftly uses real events to tell a wildly imaginative fictional story that examines fascism, racism, superstition, religion, political values, memory, family, power and love of cinema.
The charismatic and charming Moura is the glue that holds the entire epic together as a haunted man who refuses to compromise his ideals.
The actor made his mark working in Brazilian cinema and television for years, beginning in 2000, with great successes like Elite Squad (2007).
TV credits include Apple TV’s The Shining Girls (2022), Netflix’s Narcos(2016 Golden Globe nomination) where he played drug kingpin Pablo Escobar and Apple TV’s critically lauded Dope Thief (2026 Critics Choice nomination).
He’s appeared on stage in/as Hamlet as well as in Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, to name just two productions.
His film credits include, Neill Blomcamp’s Elysium (2013), Karim Aïnouz’s gay-themed Futuro Beach (2013), Stephen Daldry’s Trash (2014), Olivier Assayas’s Wasp Network (2019), Greg Barker’s Sergio (2020), The Russo Brother’s The Gray Man (2022) and Alex Garland’s Civil War (2024).
Moura made his directorial debut in 2018 with Marighella, a movie about the real-life Brazilian activist Carlos Marighella, which he also co-wrote and produced. The film that was censored at the time and did not receive a release in Brazil until 2021.
The busy thesp is set to direct his first English-language film/second feature this year titled, Last Night at the Lobster, starring Brian Tyree Henry and Elisabeth Moss.
NEON released The Secret Agent in theaters on November 26, 2025.
The Contending had the pleasure of a video chat with Moura.
