Continuing my countdown of last year’s best films…

Best Films of 2025
#4. The Secret Agent

As far as I know, I’ve seen exactly three Brazilian films and every one of them knocked me on my ass. The first was 2002’s City of God, a movie I count among my favorites of its decade. The second was 2024’s I’m Still Here, which made it to #4 on that year’s top ten list. And the third is The Secret Agent, which coincidentally landed in the same spot this year.

That’s obviously a very small sample from which to make any generalizations, but all three films capture a cultural richness and vibrancy that’s enveloping. They all run over two hours but I’d happily spend two hours more basking in the rhythms, the music, and the visuals of each.

All three also depict an underbelly of violence and corruption in the Brazil of the 1970s, which must be a fertile time period for compelling drama in the country. I’d like to understand more about that era, and how it echoes through modern Brazil, so I can appreciate these great films as more than just a cinephile.

For now, though, I’ll happily sing The Secret Agent‘s praises on that superficial level. This is a gorgeous, laid-back film that takes its time building a world, then pulls way back to explore how that world is now just a relic of memory.

Wagner Moura plays Armando, a professor who travels to the city of Recife, where his son lives with his deceased wife’s parents. He plans to retrieve the boy and escape the country, as he’s being pursued by a corrupt executive with whom he clashed during his university days.

Writer/director Kleber Mendonça Filho trickles these facts out slowly, more concerned with painting a picture of Recife and the fellow refugees intersecting with Armando in his safe house. He’s painting a hazy portrait of a time and place he remembers from his own childhood, and that sense of nostalgia lends a poignancy to every scene.

The Secret Agent is equal parts political thriller and hangout movie, and in its final scenes become something else entirely — a wistful reminder that some histories aren’t written in stone but in sand, always at risk of being washed away into the warm waters of the Atlantic.