"The Secret Agent" — Read, Study, & Download The Screenplay by Kleber Mendonça Filho
Recife, 1977: When Paperwork Gets You Killed.
"The Secret Agent" drops you into Pernambuco, 1977, where a man driving into Recife clocks a dead body at a gas station before he can even unpack. Ask questions and the local welcome committee offers a trunk upgrade.
What follows is a political paranoia thriller built from the stuff that usually feels “boring” on the page: ID cards, waiting rooms, official titles, whispered favors, and the quiet knowledge that the system is always listening. Years later, archivists in 2022 replay the evidence, a click of tape becomes a time machine, and history turns into a crime scene you can rewind.
"The Secret Agent" — Educator Resources & Study Guide
How to Write Suspense Out of Bureaucracy.
"The Secret Agent" screenplay is a masterclass in turning institutions into antagonists. This script shows how to generate dread with process: the wrong desk, the wrong stamp, the wrong name overheard at the wrong moment. It also demonstrates a killer structural device: an archive in 2022 listening back to 1977, where a simple tape “click” becomes narrative propulsion.
→ Download the full Educator Breakdown (PDF) for tone analysis, screenwriting takeaways, classroom discussion topics, and a Critical Lens on political storytelling, identity, and memory-as-evidence. For the complete screenplay download, scroll until you see the button.
The Secret Agent (2025) — Classroom Study
"The Secret Agent" screenplay is a lesson in institutional suspense: aliases, ID cards, official corridors, and the sense that danger lives inside the system itself. With an archive-in-2022 framing device that turns a tape click into a time jump, the screenplay shows how memory, evidence, and power shape the truth we inherit.
- How to write political history without speeches.
- Bureaucracy as antagonist (process as suspense).
- Identity, aliases, and the ethics of survival.
- Using an “archive frame” to reshape meaning.
- Motifs that bridge theme and plot (newsprint, sharks, tape clicks).
- Writing violence without glamorizing it.
- Satire inside a thriller: when it sharpens tension vs. deflates it.
- How “recording” changes truth, memory, and narrative authority.
"The Secret Agent" One Sheet & Script Intel
In 1977, a technology expert flees from a mysterious past and returns to his hometown of Recife in search of peace. He soon realizes that the city is far from being the refuge he seeks. NEON
| Type | ... |
FYC
|
| Version | ... | Writer's DraftEnglish |
| Date | ... | 01.09.2023 |
| Pages | ... | 164 |
| Genres | ... | Crime Drama Mystery |
| Screenplay | ... | Kleber Mendonça Filho |
| IMDb ID | ... | 27847051 |
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