With Kleber Mendonça Filho
Berlin, Oktober 2025
With The Secret Agent, premiering at the Cannes Film Festival, Kleber Mendonça Filho revisits Brazil’s history of surveillance and repression through the lens of genre cinema. In this conversation, he reflects on secrecy, authoritarian structures, and the role of film in confronting political violence and collective memory.
Below is our conversation with Kleber in Berlin on his latest movie The Secret Agent, winner of the Best Director and Best actor in Cannes Film Festival.
Image courtesy of Burcu Beaufort
Burcu Beaufort: Your traveling schedule must be wild since the premiere of your film The Secret Agent in Cannes this year.
Kleber Mendonça Filho: I’ve been all over the place the last two weeks, visiting France, Spain, Zurich, and Los Angeles. The day after tomorrow I’m heading to Mexico. But I’m not complaining. I’m happy. I miss home, the kids and Emily, my partner. We’re going to be seeing each other in Mexico. Yeah, it’s a little crazy.
BB: You have kids?
KMF: Two kids.
BB: You guys are living in Recife, Brazil, right? This is actually the city you grew up in, your childhood city?
KMF: Yeah, that’s where we live.
BB: The city of Recife plays a major role in your work, often serving as a backdrop and sometimes feeling like one of the “main characters.” How does that come about? Is it more of an exploration for you, or a way to show the world your city? Perhaps a reflection of your own admiration?
KMF: I think it’s very natural. That’s where I grew up and that’s where I live. That’s where I have my life. And it’s only natural that I should make films there. It’s like a filmmaker from Berlin making films in Berlin, no?
BB: I am not sure it’s natural. I think it’s very different for many different people.
KMF: Yeah, but look at the films of Almodóvar, for example. You look at Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown(1988) and Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down (1989) and The Flower of My Secret (1995), they’re all Madrid based.
BB: Yeah, but also look at Werner Herzog.
KMF: But that’s Herzog, you know (laughs). Spike Lee, Woody Allen, Scorsese; all shoot mostly in New York. Recife is just where I live. It doesn’t mean that one day I might make a film in France or in the United States.
BB: Films that take place in a very specific place can sometimes get political or controversial, no matter what the filmmaker intends. Since your work often engages with Brazil and its realities, have you ever faced, or do you expect, reactions like “This isn’t the Brazil we know,” or “This is not our culture”?
KMF: No. Brazil is essentially a modern democracy, so my films have never become controversial for thematic reasons. About ten years ago, Brazil took a turn to the right, which led to the election of a president who is now about to go to jail. So when the right came into power, Brazil went through a moment of democratic turbulence, and that involved a very negative and aggressive way of looking at artists and culture, which is classic of fascist-leaning governments. So I did go through some unpleasant moments as an artist, but it was only because the far right was in power. They seemed to be afraid of culture and artists. Now that Bolsonaro is not reelected and he’s about to go to jail, things are back to normal. My film, which hasn’t opened in Brazil yet, seems to be very well received there. We’ve been screening it in special screenings, and I don’t see any controversies. The Secret Agent is not really about a dictatorship, it’s a reconstruction of a time period. So I don’t think anybody would question my take on the ’70s. It’s quite generous, despite being violent and tough.
BB: Why did you choose that period? What is so specific about it?
KMF: Well, the first thing is that I remember some of the ’70s. I was nine at the time. And that’s an important starting point, because one thing is, I mean, I could have done a film in 1956, but I wasn’t born in 1956. I could maybe research and look for bits and pieces in history books, however it’s not the same thing. I remember 1977. I remember the cars, the clothes, and the smells. I remember school, where we were told to march every Friday because it was the military regime. Ridiculous. Imagine making little kids march like soldiers. So these are the memories I have. They gave me the confidence to sit down and start writing the script, but that is only one part of the story. As I was working on my documentary film called Pictures of Ghosts (2023), I spent a number of years looking at old archives. That reconnected me with many memories from the past. Many of the memories that I reconnected with were mine, others were my parents’. Others were things that I had heard about and (while doing the documentary) I had them in front of me, in newspapers or in films or in television reports. All of that gave me the emotional basis to say “I think I can write this script in the right way”. Because it’s quite easy to do a period film, all you have to do is just get old furniture and old cars, but that’s not really the whole point. It really has to do with people and the feeling.
BB: How does your writing process work when developing a script? How do you let the story take shape?
KMF: When you look at Dona Sebastiana in the film, she’s not just an old lady. She’s a woman who carries a lot of life in her, a lot of personal history. I think she’s a wonderful human artifact. She is brave. She’s natural. She’s dry but loving. She is many things. So I think, that’s when you begin to find characters like that, that’s when the script just keeps moving forward and you really believe in the script. So it’s really tough to explain how the script was put together, because there are so many different elements. My memories of filmgoing as a little kid are very strong for me. I had the opportunity of recreating a filmgoing experience back in the ’70s, because we stillhave the São Luiz Cinema, which is intact. It’s just the way it was. And it’s also a character in the film.
BB: In the movie, you reference Jaws (1975) by Steven Spielberg. We see a little boy who desperately wants to see it but isn’t allowed. Am I right in thinking this was actually your own experience?
KMF: Yeah, because I could not see the film for many years, because the film was rated 14+. And I was fascinated by the poster. It’s a great poster. I had nightmares about it, and I only saw the film in 1983 when I was a teenager. I saw it on VHS. Jaws (1975) is a very important film. It’s a landmark in the ’70s. I come from a city which has beaches, and we have a real shark problem. So all these things together, they work as an idea in the script.
BB: How does it feel to have won both Best Director and Best Actor at Cannes? It’s not every year that a film receives both awards.
KMF: (Shows two thumbs up) I was very happy because I love Wagner (Moura) and his work in the film. I was very happy for him. And then I went backstage with the Dardenne brothers. At some point they said “There’s something happening there, maybe you should go back.”
BB: You didn’t expect a second award?
KMF: No, I expected nothing. (laughs) I was having champagne.
BB: The Secret Agent is Brazil’s submission for the Oscars. Your first feature, Neighbouring Sounds (2012), which was also Brazil’s submission, did not receive a nomination. Do you think your chances are stronger this time, and how does greater recognition or being more widely known affect that?
KMF: I think what we’re doing in our lives is, hopefully, that we will be adding experience to what we have done. When we begin, we are not known and we just have to show what we can do. Then you do one film, and then you do the second film. If the second film adds to the first film, we’re all good, and then we move on to the next film. (Shows his phone) Just last night I posted this very simple post. I just did this collage of four posters of my previous works. People reacted to it very strongly, and then I realized, people really think that one film leads to the next film.
BB: Last question, How was The Secret Agent shot? Digital or analog?
KMF: We shot it digital, with very old anamorphic Panavision lenses from the ’60s, but a very modern German Alexa 35 camera which has a great sensor. The combination of the camera and the lens looks beautiful. I’m very happy with the photography in the film.