Recife, Dictatorship, and the Imaginary of an Era: The Secret Agent as an Exercise in Memory and Historical Critique

Abstract

This article analyzes O Agente Secreto (2025), directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho, as an exercise in memory and historical critique of the Brazilian civil-military dictatorship. Set in Recife during the 1970s, the film combines surveillance, urban folklore, and social affects to portray the atmosphere of fear and control that shaped everyday life under authoritarian rule. Drawing on contributions from film, memory, and power studies, the analysis engages with authors such as Marc Ferro, Robert Rosenstone, Maurice Halbwachs, Andreas Huyssen, Michel Foucault, Jacques Donzelot, and Miriam Hermeto to examine how cinema operates as a form of historical narrative, a site of symbolic dispute over the past, and a means of elaborating collective memory. The film is also compared to Pixote: A Lei do Mais Fraco (1980), directed by Hector Babenco, highlighting distinct aesthetic strategies for representing authoritarianism and different modes of constructing memories of the dictatorship. The article argues that O Agente Secreto reinscribes the dictatorship into Recife’s urban memory and reveals the persistence of its effects in contemporary sensibilities, reaffirming cinema’s role as a critical tool for historical interpretation and the ongoing negotiation of authoritarian legacies.