Pernambuco-born director Kleber Mendonça Filho celebrated this Monday (the 26th) the four Oscar nominations for his film "O Agente Secreto," received last Thursday (the 22nd). In an exclusive interview with Diario de Pernambuco, the filmmaker highlighted the newspaper's pivotal role—celebrating its 200th anniversary—in the film's narrative, while reinforcing Recife's importance as both setting and central character. The movie, competing for cinema's top prize, uses historic editions of Diario to place the story in Brazil in 1977, during the Military Dictatorship, creating a deep dialogue between memory, journalism, and art.
With the news of the nominations, life in the Pernambuco capital came to a standstill, turning Thursday's lunch into a collective celebration. Kleber received the reporters at his apartment, still in a festive mood but with the calm of someone seeing their work recognized internationally. The director, who grew up reading Diario in the 1970s, made a point of emphasizing the historical relevance of the publication—the oldest continuously running newspaper in Latin America. "O Diario is 200 years old and is literally a kind of diary for the state of Pernambuco and the city of Recife," he said, explaining that its presence in the film is symbolic, historical, and above all narrative.
Thus, the newspaper's pages are not just period scenery but a driving force of the plot. They display, for example, the death toll from Recife's Carnival—a direct result of the regime's violence—and recount the bizarre case of the "Perna Cabeluda" (Hairy Leg), an urban legend born from a chronicle published in Diario itself. To accurately reproduce the graphic style of the era, production designer Thales Junqueira and his team worked meticulously, while journalist and researcher Cleodon Coelho wrote the fictional articles that appear in the film.
Pernambuco Cinema in the Spotlight
Kleber Mendonça Filho was emphatic in defending the strength of his state's audiovisual output. "Pernambuco cinema is the most author-driven in Brazil," he declared, citing films like "Amarelo Manga" and "Cinema, Aspirinas e Urubus," as well as his own trilogy that began with "O Som ao Redor." For him, works that are deeply honest about their place of origin create powerful communication with diverse audiences, refuting any criticism that "O Agente Secreto" is "too local."
The director concluded with a statement that sums up his vision: "Recife is a city like any other. Making a film here turns it into a star, just like New York for Americans or Paris for the French." This remark reinforces the belief that the authenticity and richness of detail in a regional production are, in fact, its greatest assets for conquering the world. The Oscar nominations, therefore, are not just an award for a film, but a recognition of the narrative power of a city and an entire cultural ecosystem.