Cannes film set under Brazil’s dictatorship has echoes in present, director says
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Cannes film set under Brazil’s dictatorship has echoes in present, director says
Director Mendonca Filho competes for top prize for third time
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Film draws on director’s memories of Recife under military rule
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“Narcos” actor Wagner Moura stars in political thriller
By Hanna Rantala and Miranda Murray
CANNES, France, – Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonca Filho wanted to explore his childhood memories of life under the country’s military dictatorship and how that time echoes in the present in his Cannes Film Festival competition film “The Secret Agent.”
“The film opens saying ‘Our story takes place in 1977, a time full of mischief’, as if something is different today,” the 56-year-old director told Reuters.
It’s “ironic and interesting” that some of the ideas that were left behind during the roughly 50 years between then and now are once again becoming mainstream, he added.
The military ruled Brazil between 1964 and 1985 following a coup d’etat, during which thousands of people were detained and tortured, and hundreds forcibly disappeared, with many being exiled and persecuted.
“The Secret Agent,” which marks Mendonca Filho’s third time competing for the festival’s Palme d’Or top prize after the gory hit “Bacurau” and “Aquarius,” celebrated its premiere on Sunday.
Brazil’s film community is still riding high after “I’m Still Here,” recounting the true story of a mother of five whose husband disappears during the same period, took home the country’s first-ever Oscar in a major category this year.
Wagner Moura, who played Pablo Escobar in hit TV series “Narcos,” stars as Marcelo, a mysterious technology researcher who flees to the coastal city of Recife to lay low during Carnival season.
However, he ends up being tailed by hitmen in what industry publication IndieWire called “a vividly textured epic about a man trying to get out”.
Moura told Reuters he had never been happier than working on the film with Mendonca Filho.
“I was working with Kleber, I was in Brazil, I was doing a political thriller, so everything seemed perfect to me,” he said.
This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
