Actor Wagner Moura and director Kleber Mendonça Filho in the set of The Secret Agent
The Cannes Film Festival announced today the main lineup for its 78th edition, which includes four Latin American directors among the 52 films unveiled. Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho is the sole Latin American in this year’s Palme d'Or competition with his new film The Secret Agent / O Secreto Agente. This marks his third time in Cannes' main competition, following Aquarius (2016) and Bacurau (co-directed with Juliano Dornelles, 2019). His documentary Pictures of Ghosts was featured in the festival’s Special Screenings section in 2023.
The Secret Agent, starring Wagner Moura (Narcos, Civil War), Udo Kier, and Gabriel Leone, is a politically charged thriller that blends Mendonça Filho’s signature formal rigor with themes of surveillance, disinformation, and the erosion of democratic norms. Set in 1977, during the final years of Brazil’s military dictatorship, the film follows Marcelo, a 40-year-old teacher who returns to Recife in search of peace, only to find that the city is far from the refuge he hoped for.
Academy Award-winning Chilean director Sebastián Lelio (A Fantastic Woman) returns to Cannes after a long hiatus with his Spanish-language musical The Wave / La ola, screening in the Cannes Premieres out-of-competition section. Inspired by the feminist protests that erupted across Chile in 2018, the film follows a university student who becomes an unexpected central figure in the movement.
Renowned Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck will also appear in Cannes Premieres with his latest documentary feature, Orwell : 2+2=5. Weaving together archival footage, past adaptations of 1984, and a montage of contemporary imagery, the Oscar-nominated, BAFTA-winning director revisits Orwell’s vision to explore its continued urgency and its warnings for the future.
Also representing Chile is first-time feature director Diego Céspedes, whose debut The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo / La misteriosa mirada del flamenco will compete in the Un Certain Regard section. Set in 1983, in a remote Chilean mining town haunted by a mythic disease said to spread when men fall in love—through a mere glance—eight-year-old Lidia watches as her two brothers are quarantined following a raid on a clandestine gay speakeasy. As paranoia mounts, she is forced to confront the town’s fear and prejudice. Céspedes previously won the Cinéfondation First Prize in 2018 for his short film The Summer of the Electric Lion.
Cannes has historically not been especially generous to Latin American cinema, and this year is no exception. Still, these four films offer a glimpse of the region’s cinematic vitality—spanning a debut feature, a genre-bending musical, and a political thriller from one of its most distinctive voices.
