Which film will win the Oscar for best international feature?

In the intriguing start ofThe secret agentArmando, the widowed protagonist played by Wagner Moura, stops at a gas station on his way to Recife. A corpse lies on the ground, seemingly unconcerned by the station attendant. It's Carnival. There's violence, but nothing stops. When the police arrive, they're more interested in the protagonist than the deceased. In his most ambitious feature film to date, Kleber Mendonça Filho portrays 1970s Brazil as a collection of contradictions permeated by the normalization of (not only) state violence. The film, nominated for the Oscar for Best Picture and Best International Feature FilmThe film focuses on an underground militant living in a dissidents' safe house who begins working under a false identity at the Civil Registry and plans to flee the country with his son.

Mendonça Filho conceives the film with the pulse and audiovisual power of the greats thrillers Politicians of the seventies: the character's trajectory is marked by constant threat, embodied by a series of perfectly drawn supporting characters, including abusive police officers and hired killers. The Brazilian director expresses his devotion to genre cinema and B-movies through subtle nods, such as the role he plays in it. Shark Steven Spielberg's film and the subplot surrounding the killer hairy leg. The power ofThe secret agent At times, it falters due to its attempt to encompass many issues related to political repression and resistance, including those concerning its legacy in the present. But we are witnessing a splendid exercise in antifascist cinema practiced within the genre, in which activism is expressed more through attitudes than discourse: from the drive of the veteran activist who welcomes dissidents (as Mendonça Filho always takes care with the roles of women who are no longer so young) to the vibrant charisma of the country she loves.