ItalianoO agente secreto
25 October 17:30
Teatro Studio Gianni Borgna
Pub Acc
Festa del cinema
Synopsis
Brazil, 1977. Marcelo, a tech expert, is on the run. He arrives in Recife during the week-long Carnival, hoping to reunite with his son, but he soon realizes that the city is anything but the violence-free haven he was looking for.
COMMENTARY
Recife’s Carnival is under way, with its joys and its terrors; the film throws in a father-in-law who’s a projectionist; sharks like Spielberg’s, and real ones, plus those of the human variety. And there’s a student today, a young woman trying to reconstruct that storied past by listening to cassette tapes. The Secret Agent is a thriller that exudes colour, heat, and paranoia, yet joie de vivre and passion for cinema.
DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT
What I remember about Brazil in 1977 is the texture of the time, how Brazil felt. A lot has changed since then, but from 2016 until 2022, in the last ten years, it feels like we have gone back in time in terms of how society behaves. I’ve observed a certain theater of the absurd: it only looks like justice is being served, and people behave in a theatrical way. I found myself having to answer for my work as a filmmaker, but some people protect you, and others attack you. That's where some of the ideas for the film came from.
Director
Kleber Mendonça Filho
Kleber Mendonça Filho was born in Recife, in northeast Brazil. Neighboring Sounds, his first narrative feature, was considered one of the ten best films of 2012 by the New York Times. Three of his films premiered at Cannes: Aquarius, in competition in 2016; Bacurau, co-directed with Juliano Dornelles and winner of the Jury Prize in 2019; and the documentary Pictures of Ghosts in 2023.