Wagner Moura on ‘The Secret Agent,’ Confronting Authoritarianism

For Wagner Moura, The Secret Agent is a homecoming in more ways than one.

Kleber Mendonça Filho’s politically charged drama is Moura’s first role in his native Portuguese in a decade, after star-making turns in Netflix’s Narcos (in Spanish) and English performances in projects including Alex Garland’s Civil War and the Emmy-nominated AppleTV+ series Dope Thief.

The film also marks Moura’s return to Brazil in the wake of the Bolsonaro era, the four years (2019-2022) when far-right president Jair Bolsonaro ruled the country, and the government was openly hostile towards artists and independent voices. “Whoever was vocal against him, as in any other fascist type of government, suffered the consequences,” Moura said.

Moura experienced this firsthand with his directorial debut, Marighella, the story of writer-turned-politician Carlos Marighella, who fought the Brazilian military dictatorship of the 1970s. The film was finished in 2019, but the Bolsonaro government withheld funding for its distribution, effectively censoring the movie. It was finally released in 2021.

Bolsonaro’s political project ultimately collapsed — he lost reelection in 2022, attempted to overturn the result with a January 6–style insurrection, and earlier this month was convicted of plotting a military coup and sentenced to 27 years in prison.

For Moura, the echoes of Brazil’s dictatorship and the dangers of authoritarianism repeating itself, fed directly into The Secret Agent.

In the film, Brazil’s submission for the 2026 Oscars, he plays an ordinary man caught in the suffocating pressures of dictatorship amid the complicity of civilian elites.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Moura reflected on the Bolsonaro years, the lessons of dictatorship, and the parallels he sees with Trump’s America. “It’s undeniable that Trump has authoritarian positions, right? A man who attacks the press, attacks the universities, attacks artists. It’s the whole book of fascism.”

What drew you back to Brazil to make your first film in Portuguese in more than a decade?

I directed a film in Portuguese in 2017 called Marighella, but I didn’t act in it, so this is my first acting role in Portuguese in more than 10 years. I did Narcos, which took like two years, and then there was the Bolsonaro time, when he basically destroyed every way of making movies in Brazil. That was the real genesis of this film. Marighella, this film that I directed premiered in Berlin in 2019, but I could only release it in 2021. Bolsonaro really censored the film in Brazil. And [The Secret Agent director] Kleber also suffered consequences for the things that he was saying. You know the drill: They attack universities, artists, the press. It’s not a new tactic. It’s the playbook of fascism. But it was very hardcore.

That was sort of the genesis of this project. Kleber and I, and lots of artists and intellectuals, academics and journalists in Brazil were like: ‘What the fuck are we going to do?’ The Secret Agent came from that political situation.

So you started to develop this together?

Yes. I met Kleber in Cannes 20 years ago, in 2005. I was there with a Brazilian film called Lower City, and he was there as a critic. And we hit it off. Maybe because we’re both from the Northeast of Brazil, he’s from Recife, I’m from Salvador, and we shared lots of cultural backgrounds and jokes and things. There was a connection.

And then when I came back to Brazil, I started to watch his short films, and I was like: ‘Dude, that critic can direct films.’ They were great. We kept in touch. And then I saw a film called Neighboring Sounds, which was his first feature film. I thought it was one of the greatest Brazilian films I have ever seen. I was like: I have to work with this guy. He’s my soulmate in terms of filmmaking. Then he did a film with Sonia Braga called Aquarius. Then, when he did Bacurau, he invited me to be in it, but I couldn’t, because I was directing Marighella. So we started to build this thing together.

I know The Secret Agent isn’t a biography, but were there real stories you researched and drew on for the movie?

I did a lot of that in my own film, because my film is about a real character. A guy called Marighella, who was the leader of the armed resistance against the dictatorship. So I was talking to everybody, bringing in the ex-guerrilla guys. I did a lot of real, deep research.

With this one, it was different. What I really love about this film is that this guy is not trying to overthrow the government. He’s not a guerrilla. He’s just a man who is trying to stick with his values in the moment that everything around him is pushing in the opposite direction. It’s about how brutal a dictatorship is on regular people. Not the freedom fighters, but the guys who just want to go their own way, live their own lives, and the price they pay for that.

You don’t see any military in this film, because actually, Brazil’s coup d’etat [in 1964] was a civil-military coup d’etat. It was supported by businessmen and people who wanted to get rid of a left-wing government. In the film, we see more of the civil part of it. These businessmen, these people, who were empowered by the government. Like the way Trump empowers the Silicon Valley people, and all his friends. That’s what happened in Brazil.

Do you see direct parallels to what’s happening in the U.S. with Trump?

I don’t think they’re there yet. But it’s undeniable that Trump has authoritarian positions. A man who attacks the press, attacks the universities, and attacks artists. It’s the whole playbook of fascism. These are the first things that they go for, like free thinking, free press.

What warning does this film, and Brazilian history, have for people in the U.S.?

We saw the Capitol invaded on January 6 (2021). There was the invasion, the election deniers, and a leader provoking his audience to do something. In Brazil, the very same thing happened. [On Jan. 8, 2023]. The very same thing happened. The people invaded the institutions. It was very brutal, and very similar to what happened in the Capitol. The difference was that Brazil acted really fast, and put people in jail, they suspended political rights to Bolsonaro and went after the ones that financed the insurgency.

We tried Bolsonaro. Just two weeks ago, the Supreme Court sentenced him to 27 years in jail. That didn’t happen in the U.S., and the reason I think it didn’t is that Brazilians know what a dictatorship is. We know how hardcore that is. We know how bad that shit is. I said this when I was promoting Civil War: I think Americans take democracy for granted. Maybe that’s changing. Maybe now people are awakening to the fact that they have to do something.

I’m very proud of Brazil right now. That’s not something I say very often. We grew up saying: ‘Brazilian democracy is very young, very fragile.’ We only came out of a dictatorship in 1985. But now, I’m like: ‘Fuck yeah, man, it works!’ The institutions worked separately and it was beautiful to see how they did their job. Everything worked like a democracy should work. There was an attempt to topple the state, the rule of law, and it was punished.

You know, Brazil had an amnesty law after 1985 that basically forgave all the torturers, killers, everybody who did all kinds of horrible things during the dictatorship. Had we not had that, Bolsonaro’s own career [who was a military officer under the dictatorship] would not have been possible. It’s important we remember this. This film is also a film about memory.

Neon is handling the U.S. release of The Secret Agent. The film bows in New York on Nov. 26 and in L.A. on Dec. 5.