Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho has never been interested in subtle allegory when reality itself is this confrontational. With The Secret Agent, his latest politically charged thriller set during the final years of Brazil’s military dictatorship, the director once again fuses genre storytelling with cultural memory, paranoia and moral urgency. In a conversation with our…
Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent is the type of film that doesn’t merely ask for attention, it commands it. Set against the suffocating backdrop of Brazil’s military dictatorship in 1977, the film unfolds during Recife’s Carnaval, where colour, music and movement become both camouflage and provocation. What should be a time of collective release…
The 63rd Annual Sydney Film Festival came to a finish on Sunday night with Brazilian-French film Aquarius, directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho, awarded the prestigious annual Sydney Film Prize, taking home $63,000 in cash. The Sydney Film Prize is awarded for the film’s ‘emotional power and resonance; audaciousness, cutting-edge, courageousness; and capacity to go beyond the usual…
