According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, at the end of June 2025, 117.3 million people had been forced to flee their homes globally — that's more than 1 in every 70 people on Earth. Beyond refugees, this includes 67.8 million internally displaced people (IDPs) within their own countries and 8.42 million asylum-seekers. The internally displaced are often hunted by their own state and forced to depend upon the protection of strangers.
Armando (Walter Moura), the lead character in The Secret Agent, is one of the internally displaced. A former professor and technology expert, he is being pursued by his former employer, Henrique Castro Ghirotti (Luciano Chirolli)
who resents his resistance to changes in the company; he has hired two hit men to find and kill Armando.
Armando goes to Recife where his young son is living with his grandparents. He wants to take the boy out of Brazil, which is in political turmoil due to the military dictatorship. Even though the city is celebrating carnival, the atmosphere is tense with violence just beneath the surface.
Armando connects with a former anarcho-communist, Dona Sebastiana (Tania Maria), who runs a shelter for other refugees. They each have their own stories to tell of persecution, corruption, secrecy, and violence. Having taken the name Marcelo, Armando connects with Elza (Maria Fernanda Candido) who tells him he must get out of the country because there is a price on his head. But he stays in Recife, getting a job at an identification bureau where he searches for information about his mother.
This story is relayed both as a drama and as a recalled story discovered on some audiotapes in the current day by Flavia (Laura Lufési), a history student. She becomes determined to discover what happened to Armando.
This is one of those movies that exercises your empathy. Wagner Moura as Armando/Marcelo won the Best Actor Golden Globe, Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival, and was nominated for a Best Actor Academy Award. Whether looking with love at his young son, listening intently to the worries of his housemates, trying to remain invisible and unrecognized at his workplace, or cautiously navigating the streets – we find ourselves seeing the world through his eyes. And it is not a pretty picture.
Authoritarianism is rampant around the world. This story is set in 1977 Brazil, but it is being replicated today in numerous countries, including the United States.