Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho has a passion for the past. Growing up as the son of a historian under Brazil’s military dictatorship, he learned the importance of finding truth in often manipulated historical records.

“Understanding the past is part of how we live in the present, and for me, it’s a very strong theme,” Mendonça Filho told WSN.

Mendonça Filho studied journalism at the Federal University of Pernambuco before working as a film critic for several years. In 2012, he achieved global recognition for his debut narrative feature “Neighboring Sounds.” Since then, his films have earned several awards, including the Jury Prize for his 2019 film “Bacurau” and Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival. His new political drama “The Secret Agent” earned him the latter and already seems poised for Oscar glory in 2026.

The film stars Wagner Moura, known in the United States for his starring role in “Narcos,” and tackles the era of Brazil’s military dictatorship. Set in 1977, the film follows Armando Solimões (Moura), a former professor, as he reunites with his young son while assassins are hot on his trail. WSN spoke with Mendonça Filho about how his career informed his work on “The Secret Agent” and his thoughts on the film’s impact.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

WSN: You started your career as a film critic and now you’re a writer-director. Your lead actor, Wagner Moura, has become a director himself with ‘Marighella’ in 2019. How did your experiences in different roles come into play as you collaborated on ‘The Secret Agent?’

Mendonça Filho: I really look at my work as a film critic as part of my own personal development. I was watching films and trying to understand what culture is trying to tell us, which is the main mission of a film critic. It’s not about giving people advice on where to spend their money on the weekend. It’s actually trying to understand what the world is trying to say, what society is trying to express.

That experience naturally took me to writing my scripts, and that’s how I went into the actual filmmaking. Getting together with Wagner was also very natural because I really liked him as an actor and as a person. He had seen ‘Neighboring Sounds’ and he wanted to work with me, and in the meantime, he directed his own film, ‘Marighella.’ And not for one moment in ‘The Secret Agent’ did he behave like a filmmaker. He was always the actor, the scientist of human situations. It was the perfect partnership.

WSN: Were you very aware of your past as a journalist and infusing that into the film?

Mendonça Filho: I think I was. Going to the archives and looking at newspapers was something I did when preparing for this film and when I was doing ‘Pictures of Ghosts,’ my previous film. The newspapers are this endless source of information, pleasure, fascination and frustration, because they don’t really tell the whole story. But, I should also point out that I was a professional newspaperman. I worked in a big newsroom, and that’s when a lot of my romanticism around journalism was shredded to pieces.

I saw things happening that really frustrated me, things that would come out either through incompetence or a strategy to manipulate or attack someone. I slowly came to understand that a lot of what is in ‘The Secret Agent’ from the newspapers is just misguided or a plain lie. It’s not to be trusted, which is ironic, because it is one source of information about the past. So, it’s complex. Use the newspapers as sources, but be mindful of what they tell you.

WSN: Let’s go back to your 2019 film ‘Bacurau.’ The story takes place in the near future but it’s a metaphor for a sort of modern-day quilombo — settlements made by escaped slaves in the Brazilian hinterlands — fighting against colonial forces. In “The Secret Agent,” you have the storyline of university students who are listening to Armando’s stories. Why is it so important for your films to have a link between the past and the present?

Mendonça Filho: It’s just the way I look at life and the world. I look at a building and I immediately think, ‘This is probably 70, 80 years old. This is over 150 years old. This is no older than 10 years.’ I look at people and their personal histories. I love people who are aware of their existence on Earth through time.

Sometimes I realize that there are people who don’t ever think like that. They actually believe that we’re here and now, and that’s it, not understanding that we’re here now because of so many things that have happened in the past. I’m the son of a historian who probably brought me all of those ideas as I was growing up, even as a kid.

WSN: I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Walter Salles’ ‘I’m Still Here,’ another recent Brazilian film that has gained international acclaim and takes place during the Brazilian dictatorship. With that film and ‘The Secret Agent,’ do you think Brazilian cinema is entering a new chapter?

Mendonça Filho: Any new good film will open up a new chapter in whatever theme or timeline it examines. I look at Walter’s film as a wonderfully told story about dealing with memory. ‘The Secret Agent’ takes place in the ’70s but is probably about the failure of memory, and it’s probably more bleak. But I love the idea that they are together, and they can be seen as two contributions to the whole idea of dealing with memory in Brazil. And memory is a huge theme because it requires time and effort to keep it.

For example, our conversation can be kept in an archive for the future, and it might be very interesting to listen to in, I don’t know, 55 years. But it requires discipline, protocols and technical knowledge to keep this conversation well-preserved. It’s a great theme for cinema, even for a story grounded in naturalism and realism, which is how the perception of time will be seen in a few years.

Contact Leo Field at [email protected].