Overview
- In a Jan. 13 IndieWire Filmmaker Toolkit interview, the director describes using wipes, split-screens, stop-motion, and mixed formats to guide viewers through time shifts.
- 'The Secret Agent' is Brazil’s official submission for the Academy Award for Best International Feature.
- The film alternates between Armando in 1977 evading the dictatorship’s cronies and Flavia in the present digitizing cassette tapes that recount his story.
- Mendonça Filho moved the present-day material earlier to create on-screen ‘communion’ between eras, illustrated by mirrored reactions to a screening of The Omen and other archival cues.
- He says he avoids default contemporary tropes like obligatory drone shots, aiming instead for a ‘logic of life’ that embraces digression and non-chronological storytelling.