Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
It’s an oft-stated notion, 11 simple words that sum up endless cycles of devastation, ignorance and violence throughout history. Wagner Moura knows the sentiment well. The Brazilian actor grew up in the shadow of a military dictatorship that was ousted when he was young, only to see the far-right politician Jair Bolsonaro take office in the late 2010s. Even though Bolsonaro is now serving a 27-year sentence for an attempted coup, Moura finds it maddening, the echoes of tragedy and fascism over time sounded by those who choose to forget.
So he vows to remember.
“In Brazil, we had this thing called the Amnesty Law after the dictatorship, which basically forgave torturers and killers and people that did all kinds of despicable things to other people,” Moura said. “I grew up feeling like there was something missing in terms of my memory and in the historic trajectory of the country. When you kind of erase something, it’s hard to move on with sanity.”
Memory lies at the center of “The Secret Agent,” Moura’s collaboration with writer-director Kleber Mendonça Filho. It represents Brazil in the Best International Feature Film race at the Academy Awards but also contends in categories beyond that one. The two have known each other for 20 years, following an encounter at the Cannes Film Festival when Mendonça Filho was a critic while Moura was promoting his film “Lower City.” When the pair returned to Cannes exactly two decades later with “The Secret Agent,” they had a glorious homecoming: Moura won Best Actor at the festival and Mendonça Filho won Best Director.
Many things drew the actor and director together, but perhaps none more so than their shared politics. Neither could stomach what Moura called the “hardcore/proto-fascist government” of Brazil in the late 2010s and early 2020s, finding it “hard for press, for university, for artists. Whoever was vocal against the government suffered lots of consequences.”
In that atmosphere, Mendonça Filho wrote the film and tailored the lead role of Armando, a university educator taking refuge under an assumed identity, specifically for Moura. “’The Secret Agent’ was born from both of us talking as friends and going, ‘How the fuck can we react to this?’” the actor said. “It’s a film about a guy who sticks with the values that he has, even when everything around him was saying the opposite of what he believed.”
Moura noted the importance of making Armando a public servant in a period when fascists in power are “so smart at changing who the elite are” in the public eye: “The real group of people that are enemies of the people are not the ones they are pointing their guns at.” (It should come as no surprise that Moura’s partner, photographer and docmentarian Sandra Delgado, is a former journalist, as is he.)
Just as important was showing the minor so-called offense that lands Armando in the crosshairs of the true elite. “There are places in the world where just the fact that you are what you are — just the fact that you’re gay, just the fact that you’re Black, just the fact that you’re a trans person — puts your life in danger, and you don’t need to do anything,” he said. “Just be what you are: It’s a dangerous thing. That’s exactly what happens with this guy. I love the fact that he’s not a freedom fighter. He doesn’t want to overthrow the government. He’s not doing anything. He’s just sticking with his values.”
“The Secret Agent” emphasizes the power of community, of building roots with those around you and coming together in the face of oppression. Moura called this concept “a medicine against insanity,” and he hopes that such communities around the world are struck by the film’s ideas.
“People from the future or from the past, they see the film with different lenses,” he said. “It’s interesting because, when we did this film, the feeling of the film was like Bolsonaro’s time in Brazil, the oppression and a wannabe authoritarian guy. But now Brazil is in such a great Democratic moment. The Brazilian audience was seeing this film when Bolsonaro was tried, he’s in jail, everybody that attempted (to overthrow) democracy was tried. Whereas here in the U.S., things are different, so it’s fascinating.
“I think it’s great that Brazilians are watching this movie in a time that they’re like, ‘Oh, there was a dictatorship, there was Bolsonaro,’ and then they compare and see how life is right now. And American audiences may go, ‘Oh, a dictatorship? That doesn’t look great.’”
With soul and sincerity, Moura portrays a father who can hardly remember his mother and who fights to be remembered by his son. These themes of memory so integral to “The Secret Agent” trace back to the film’s production, which took place in Mendonça Filho’s hometown of Recife, the location of all his movies and a city where the director is “a hero of the town,” in Moura’s words. “It’s beautiful the way he sees his town and his culture and uses it in his films,” he said. “It’s important for them to see themselves in films, and they’re grateful to Kleber for what he does.”
“The Secret Agent” also marked a return for Moura, who acted on screen in his native Portuguese for the first time in years. He said it was a liberating experience that allowed him to connect to his past.
“When I say things in Portuguese, the words come filled with memory,” he said. “It’s different. I know exactly what the word father means, but when I say, pai, it comes with memory.”
But those words also carry new memories for him, because Moura himself is now a father of three sons. Though “The Secret Agent” is loaded with harsh reality and dangerous situations, the actor said he hopes his sons can one day watch it with pride in their heritage and their family.
“Their father is present in their lives, and they shouldn’t take that for granted,” he said. “Not that I’m the greatest father in the world, but there are so many people that don’t have that privilege to have their parents around. As Brazilians, I think it’s great for them to see a part of their culture, part of their history.”
This story first ran in the Actors/Directors/Screenwriters issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.
