Brazil has selected Kleber Mendonça Filho’s period political thriller The Secret Agent as its contender for the 2026 Oscar in the best international feature category.
Narcos star Wagner Moura stars in the 1970s-set drama, playing a technology expert who gets on the wrong side of Brazil’s military dictatorship and finds himself a target. He returns to his hometown to reunite with his young son and flee the country before hitmen, hired by a corrupt federal official, catch him.
The Secret Agent premiered in competition in Cannes, where Moura won the best actor prize. In a rave review, The Hollywood Reporter‘s chief film critic David Rooney said the film, which mixes surreal humor with a deeply serious look at the trauma in Brazil’s past, is “both both of a piece with and completely different to Walter Salles’ Oscar winner from last year, I’m Still Here.”
The Secret Agent is Mendonça Filho’s fourth film, after the more off-beat features Neighboring Sounds, Aquarius, and Bacarau. Rooney, in his review, calls the director’s latest “his strongest yet [which] deserves to lift him into the ranks of the world’s top contemporary filmmakers.”
Neon acquired The Secret Agent out of Cannes and is releasing it stateside.
I’m Still Here was the first-ever Brazilian film to win the Oscar for best international feature. But Brazil has been nominated in the category a total of six times, including for Keeper of Promises (1962), O Quatrilho (1995), Four Days in September (1997), and Salles’ Central Station (1998).
The first shortlist of 15 films will be announced on Dec. 16, 2025, followed by the final list on Jan. 22, 2026. The 98th Academy Awards Ceremony will take place in Los Angeles on March 15, 2026.
