The Secret Agent: gripping thriller reminds us why academic freedom needs protecting

Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent (O Agente Secreto, 2025) marks a moment of consolidation in one of contemporary Brazilian cinema’s most consistent careers.

The film belongs to a recent wave of Brazilian productions revisiting the military dictatorship (1964-1985) that process, through cinema, an unresolved trauma whose reverberations continue to shape Brazil’s political present.

In a piece for The Conversation, Stephanie Dennison and Alfredo Luiz Paes de Oliveira Suppia explore The Secret Agent's depiction of universities as battlegrounds where memory, power and democracy collide.