Wagner Moura’s riveting star turn in “The Secret Agent” made him the first Brazilian man nominated for an Academy Award for lead actor. “The Secret Agent,” set primarily in 1977, centers on Moura’s character Marcelo, who goes into hiding because a villainous businessman wants to kill him. “We call it a military dictatorship, but it was a civil military dictatorship,” Moura notes. The rise of Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s far-right president from 2019 to 2023, was met with disbelief and horror by many Brazilians who remembered the dictatorship, Moura and “Secret Agent” writer-director Kleber Mendonça Filho among them. “We think that art and politics merge, that they shouldn’t be separate.

Source: Los Angeles Times February 09, 2026 20:02 UTC