The Story Punk Podcast

Episode 046: This week on Story Punk, we continue our June international cinema series with a trip to 1977 Brazil for The Secret Agent, Kleber Mendonça Filho’s sprawling and unsettling political thriller starring Wagner Moura.

Moura plays Armando, an engineer living under the alias Marcelo after a confrontation with a powerful businessman forces him into hiding. He travels to Recife hoping to escape the country with his young son, finding refuge among a community of ordinary people whose lives have been disrupted by political persecution, corporate influence, and a government that can make its enemies disappear.

We explore how The Secret Agent uses the ingredients of a conventional espionage thriller, including secret identities, surveillance, code names, hired killers, and political conspiracy, while refusing to become a traditional spy movie. The real threat is larger and harder to see: a system in which wealthy corporations, police, and state power overlap until no one can tell where one ends and another begins.

They discuss the movie’s patient world-building, the slow accumulation of dread, and why the danger becomes more immediate once it finally takes human form. They also examine the film’s shifting timelines and its portrait of political violence echoing through children, families, buildings, and entire generations long after the original victims have disappeared.

The conversation also covers Wagner Moura’s grounded performance, and the film’s remarkable ensemble, its blend of professional and nonprofessional actors, Udo Kier’s memorable appearance, Recife’s distinct identity, and the strange legend of the murderous Hairy Leg.

Plus: corrupt cops, casual brutality, movie-palace ghosts, Jaws, The Omen, David Lynch energy, regional accents, fever-dream heat, and why the most frightening villain may be one too large to fit inside a single frame.

Listen now to Story Punk, where story matters.