The Secret Agent · reception & legacy
2025 · Kleber Mendonça Filho
How The Secret Agent has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
No reappraisal needed yet — it arrived a hit: a 13-minute Cannes ovation, the most-awarded film of the 2025 festival, then a Best Picture Oscar nomination, though it lost Best International Feature to Sentimental Value after winning the equivalent Golden Globe and Critics Choice prizes.
What's debated
Film fans keep arguing over whether its unhurried, digressive two-hours-forty is the whole point or proof it's a 'thriller' that refuses to thrill — plus lingering grumbling that the Oscar went to Norway instead.
Its footprint
It landed as the crown of Brazilian cinema's back-to-back moment, one year after I'm Still Here — and its Jaws-summer-of-'77-in-Recife texture, complete with a tabloid-legend severed hairy leg, became instant Letterboxd review bait.
Where it stands
An instant canon climber: a fixture at or near the top of 2025 year-end and Letterboxd best-of lists, already a 'you must see this' for the decade's world cinema.
Named by the director
Influences Kleber Mendonça Filho has publicly named — the director's own word, distinct from the inferred lines of influence.
- Jaws (1975) — Mendonça Filho has discussed drawing on Jaws — playing in Brazilian cinemas in the film's 1977 setting — as a key inspiration for its shark-panic period texture.
- Lúcio Flávio (1977) — He named this Brazilian dictatorship-era thriller as a strong reference for the film.
- Nashville (1975) — He cited Altman's ensemble sprawl — a film with 'so many faces' — as a model for its wide human canvas.
- Sam Peckinpah — Cited among the 1970s filmmakers whose spirit he wanted the film to channel.
- Steven Spielberg — He pointed to early Spielberg — Duel and The Sugarland Express era — as a touchstone for its '70s genre energy.