This Brazilian Oscar contender has the best acting you'll see in 2026

"Back in the Seventies, in the Brazilian city of Recife, a "hairy leg" became an urban legend, popularised knowingly by the press as a scapegoat for all the violence doled out by the military police. That myth resurfaces in Brazil's powerhouse Oscar contender The Secret Agent, when a disembodied limb is pulled from a shark's belly and brought to grotesque life: a sentient killer, rendered in janky stop-motion as it hops around the streets with vengeance on its mind, terrorising the locals."

"Kleber Mendonça Filho's excavation of Brazil at the time of its military dictatorship plays out somewhere between hallucination and pulp fiction - mixing spaghetti western violence with Hitchcockian suspense and scabrous horror-comedy. It's set during carnival in 1977 Recife, where a man arrives in a sunshine-yellow VW Beetle, amateur assassins lurk in every shadow, and the local cinema is showing to a population already on edge because of the newspaper stories circulating about that murderous leg."

"Wagner Moura plays him with a matinee-idol magnetism, suave yet rugged in the face of mortal danger. Still grieving his late wife Fátima, whose death weighs on him constantly, Marcelo is holed up in a safe house run by Dona Sebastiana (Tânia Maria), a principled resistance operative with a whisky-soaked rasp who shelters refugees and arranges new identities. His young son Fernando (Enzo Nunes), staying with cinema-owning grandparents, represents his only reason to keep fighting."

Set in carnival-era 1977 Recife, the film revives an urban legend about a "hairy leg" as a grotesque, sentient killer pulled from a shark. The narrative fuses spaghetti-western violence, Hitchcockian suspense and scabrous horror-comedy to depict life under the military dictatorship. Marcelo, a research scientist targeted by assassins after crossing a minister, hides in a safe house run by Dona Sebastiana while searching government records for his disappeared mother. His young son lives with grandparents, giving Marcelo a motive to resist. Corrupt police and professional hitmen close in as paranoia and myth escalate across the city.

Read at The Independent