The Secret Agent by Kleber Mendonça Filho
The 78th annual edition of the Cannes Film Festival is in full swing now through Sunday, May 25, with several Latin American titles featured across its different sections. The sole Latin American entry in this year’s Palme d’Or competition is the Brazilian film The Secret Agent / O Secreto Agente by Kleber Mendonça Filho. This marks the director’s third appearance in Cannes’ main competition, following Aquarius (2016) and Bacurau (co-directed with Juliano Dornelles, 2019). His documentary Pictures of Ghosts was part of 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.
Two South American films will be competing in the Un Certain Regard section: the Chilean film The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo / La misteriosa mirada del flamenco by first-time feature director Diego Céspedes, and the Colombian satirical drama A Poet / Un poeta by Simón Mesa Soto.
The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo is 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.
The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo by Diego Céspedes
The second feature by director Mesa Soto, starring Ubeimar Rios, Rebeca Andrade, Guillermo Cardona, Allison Correa, Margarita Soto, and Humberto Restrepo, follows Óscar Restrepo, whose obsession with poetry has brought him no glory. Aging and erratic, he has become the cliché of the poet in the shadows. Meeting a humble teenager and helping her cultivate her talent brings a flicker of light to his days, but dragging her into the world of poets may not be the right path.
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.
Cannes Classics, the festival’s sidebar devoted to restored and historically significant cinema, features four Latin American films in its 2025 lineup. Among them is a 25th anniversary screening of Amores Perros by Alejandro González Iñárritu. Also included are the new Brazilian documentary To Vigo I Go / Para Vigo Me Voy by Lírio Ferreira and Karen Harley, a tribute to the late filmmaker Carlos Diegues; a restoration of the 1962 Colombian film The Payment / La Paga by Ciro Durán; and the 1955 Argentine melodrama Beyond Oblivion / Más Allá del Olvido by Hugo del Carril.
Amores Perros, Iñárritu’s debut feature, premiered in Critics’ Week at Cannes 25 years ago. A landmark in Latin American cinema, the film launched the international careers of many collaborators, including Gael García Bernal, Adriana Barraza, screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, composer Gustavo Santaolalla, art director Brigitte Broch, and producers Martha Sosa and Mónica Lozano. This new restoration—presented by The Film Foundation and restored by The Criterion Collection in collaboration with Mexican archives—will be screened in the presence of Iñárritu.
The Payment by Ciro Durán
To Vigo I Go explores the legacy of Carlos Diegues, one of Brazil’s most influential filmmakers. Weaving excerpts from his work with interviews spanning six decades, the documentary also includes never-before-seen footage from Diegues’ final shoot: a screening of Bye Bye Brasil in the Favela do Vidigal and a closing encounter with fellow artists.
Long thought lost, The Payment marks the feature debut of Colombian director Ciro Durán. A pioneering work of political cinema, the film was inspired by Italian neorealism and Durán’s own childhood memories. Set in the Andes, it follows a peasant trapped in a cycle of exploitation and domestic violence, culminating in an act of rebellion against the local political boss.
Beyond Oblivion, directed by Hugo del Carril, is a gothic melodrama about grief and obsession. After the death of his wife Blanca, Fernando de Arellano meets Mónica, her uncanny double, in a Paris cabaret. Their marriage is haunted by the past—and by Mónica’s vengeful former lover.
Colombian filmmaker Juanita Onzaga is participating in the Cannes Immersive competition—celebrating virtual reality and new forms of storytelling through spatial and sensory experiences—with her project Floating with Spirits—a Belgium, Luxembourg, The Netherlands production—in which two little sisters prepare for the Day of the Dead in the mystic mountains of Mexico, remembering the stories their shaman granny used to tell. A portal opens as the Mazatec community celebrates and we enter the interactive universe of their ancestors and the spirits of nature, each keeping a secret world to be unveiled.
ACID (Association for the Diffusion of Independent Cinema), the independent sidebar at Cannes, will feature two Latin American productions: Drunken Noodles by Lucio Castro and The Black Snake by Aurélien Vernhes-Lermusiaux.
Drunken Noodles, an Argentine–U.S. co-production and the third feature from Argentine-born, New York–based director Lucio Castro (End of the Century), stars Laith Khalifeh, Ezriel Kornel, Matthew Risch, and Joél Isaac. The film follows Adnan, a young art student who arrives in New York City to flat-sit for the summer. While interning at a gallery, he discovers that an unconventional older artist he once encountered is being exhibited there. As memories from his past and present begin to intertwine, a series of artistic and erotic encounters start to fracture his sense of everyday reality.
The Black Snake, a French–Colombian–Brazilian co-production, is set in the Colombian Tatacoa Desert and deeply reflects on themes of legacy and abandonment, capturing the spirit of the desert and its people. After years of absence, Ciro returns to be at the bedside of his dying mother. Confronting those he once abandoned and an ancestral legacy, he encounters the last guardians of the desert—figures who inhabit a landscape as sublime as it is fragile. The film stars Alexis Tafur, Miguel Ángel Viera, Ángela Rodríguez, Laura Valentina Quintero, and Virgelina Gil, and is produced by Dublin Films (France), Burning (Colombia, led by Diana Bustamante), and Brazil’s Vulcana Cinema.
Additionally, several Latin American filmmakers are serving on juries at this year’s festival. Mexican filmmaker Carlos Reygadas is part of the main Palme d’Or competition jury, while Argentine actor Nahuel Pérez Biscayart is one of five jurors for Un Certain Regard. Brazilian director Marcelo Caetano sits on the Queer Palm jury, which awards the LGBTQIA+ prize, and Chilean director Carmen Castillo is on the Œil d’Or jury, which selects the best documentary at the festival.
