Brazil has chosen Kleber Mendonça Filho’s interval political thriller The Secret Agent as its contender for the 2026 Oscar in the most effective worldwide characteristic class.
Narcos star Wagner Moura stars within the Seventies-set drama, enjoying a expertise professional who will get on the unsuitable facet of Brazil’s army dictatorship and finds himself a goal. He returns to his hometown to reunite along with his younger son and flee the nation earlier than hitmen, employed by a corrupt federal official, catch him.
The Secret Agent premiered in competitors in Cannes, the place Moura received the most effective actor prize. In a rave assessment, The Hollywood Reporter‘s chief movie critic David Rooney mentioned the movie, which mixes surreal humor with a deeply severe have a look at the trauma in Brazil’s previous, is “each each of a bit with and fully completely different to Walter Salles’ Oscar winner from final yr, I’m Nonetheless Right here.”
The Secret Agent is Mendonça Filho’s fourth movie, after the extra off-beat options Neighboring Sounds, Aquarius, and Bacarau. Rooney, in his assessment, calls the director’s newest “his strongest but [which] deserves to raise him into the ranks of the world’s high modern filmmakers.”
Neon acquired The Secret Agent out of Cannes and is releasing it stateside.
I’m Nonetheless Right here was the first-ever Brazilian movie to win the Oscar for greatest worldwide characteristic. However Brazil has been nominated within the class a complete of six occasions, together with for Keeper of Guarantees (1962), O Quatrilho (1995), 4 Days in September (1997), and Salles’ Central Station (1998).
The primary shortlist of 15 movies shall be introduced on Dec. 16, 2025, adopted by the ultimate listing on Jan. 22, 2026. The 98th Academy Awards Ceremony will happen in Los Angeles on March 15, 2026.