00:00Being able to act in Portuguese again, because it had been a bit since you had done that.
00:04Does that change? Does your brain work differently?
00:07Absolutely. It's so liberating.
00:10It's like, I keep quoting Javier Bardem.
00:13I don't even know if he really said that.
00:16I have to ask him this.
00:18But I think I read somewhere that Javier said that when he works in Spanish, in English,
00:23it's as if there was a big office in his brain with people trying to make that thing work
00:28and send telephone calls and emails and all that.
00:31And when he works in Spanish, the office is empty.
00:34And I think that that's a great metaphor.
00:41He used to be a critic.
00:43And in 2005, we met there.
00:45I was there with a film.
00:46And Cleber was there as a critic.
00:48And we connected.
00:50And I felt a very nice connection with him.
00:53And then I started to see his films.
00:56He directed some shorts.
00:57And I said, oh my God, this is the critic's short.
01:00It's amazing.
01:01And then I saw his first feature film, which is a film called Neighboring Sounds.
01:05And then I thought that that was one of the greatest films I had ever seen in my life.
01:11It was like, it really moved me.
01:13And from that day on, I was really obsessed in working with him.
01:17But what really connected Cleber and I was politics.
01:19Because from 2018 to 2022, Brazil was under a very, how can I put it?
01:24A dark period.
01:26A very bad time in our history.
01:29And then I think that that was sort of the genesis of it.
01:31And Cleber and I suffered a lot because everyone who was vocal against the government or, like any fascist government, they would attack universities, press, artists.
01:42And I directed a film called Marigela.
01:44It was really hard to release the film in Brazil.
01:48Cleber suffered lots of consequences of the way he behaved there, too.
01:51So we got together.
01:53And I think that this film is sort of comes from that moment.
01:58And that's not by chance that he sets the film during the dictatorship inside in 77.
02:04How long had you been kind of thinking over this story?
02:08I had been thinking for a number of years because, in fact, this film would not exist without my previous film, which is a film essay, a documentary.
02:19It's a very different kind of film.
02:20But because I spent so much time, you know, looking at archive material and old newspapers at the archive, I confirmed many of the memories that I had about the 1970s.
02:35And that gave me the basis on which I could develop The Secret Agent.
02:40So it's a very interesting case of two very different films feeling emotionally very, they are very similar emotionally.
02:51Did you always have him in mind?
02:53Or when did that come from?
02:53I always had him in mind.
02:55We were discussing this in the car.
02:57Yeah, because yesterday somebody asked a really interesting question, which no one had asked before.
03:03The first question right off the bat was, who was your second option for the role?
03:10And I was like, there was no second.
03:13Look at his face.
03:14There was no second option.
03:16Are you safer now than during the time, even a couple of years ago?
03:20Like, how are you experiencing things in your work now?
03:25That's a very good question.
03:26And the answer is yes.
03:28I think Brazil has gone back to behaving and acting in real life like a democracy.
03:36This week, the former president is actually being tried for his crimes.
03:42And it does look like he will go to jail by the end of the week.
03:47So this is a really interesting time in Brazil.
03:49And in terms of being an artist and working with culture and expressing your political views, it's just a normal part of life.
03:59I know people like that are 16, 17-year-olds.
04:01They go like, oh, was there a dictatorship in Brazil?
04:04They had no idea.
04:05And that's a very important thing.
04:06Our film is also about memory.
04:08And I think this is a very important thing.
04:10To see Brazilians seeing themselves represented in artists.
04:16Because for a long time during Bolsonaro's period, artists were, we were so attacked with so many, you know, lies and horrible things that you see Brazilians rooting for Fernando Torres and for Walter Salles and for the film.
04:36And thinking like, these people represent us.
04:40For me, it was the most special thing about that.
04:43Something that we're asking everybody who comes through is what's the most, like, extreme or intense place that you filmed a production?
04:52Well, I did this film called The Lead Squad.
04:55And in that movie, we had to shoot, like, in favelas that were dominated by the drug trade.
05:01And so in order to be there, we had to make a deal with the drug traffickers.
05:05And that was weird, you know, because we were there and they were around them with their guns.
05:12And they were like, it's all good.
05:13You're good, dude.
05:14Nothing's going to happen to you.
05:15And I was all dressed as a policeman.
05:17I was like, man.
05:17I was like, man.
05:17I was like, man.
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