Cinema Paraíso

Gabriel Leone as Bobbi, a young hit man, in Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent.

With its glory days as Brazil’s Hollywood long behind it, the northern city of Recife is having a film renaissance, powering productions such as the Oscar–nominated The Secret Agent

By Elena Clavarino

In the opening scene of The Secret Agent, a fugitive living under the alias “Marcelo” drives along a sunbaked road through Brazil’s backcountry before pulling up at a gas station. The camera lingers, luxuriously, on the dilapidated roadside. Opposite the pump lies a dead body, haphazardly covered with half a sheet of cardboard and encircled by black flies. When Marcelo asks about it, the gas-station attendant shrugs. A station employee shot a thief three days earlier, he explains, then disappeared. He had called the police, but no one came. “Now it’s starting to smell,” he says. Ironically, two officers READ ON