Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1543327
eon's The Secret Agent is set in Brazil during Carnival week of 1977. Widower and technology research- er Marcelo (Wagner Moura) arrives in the city of Recife, where the atmosphere is both vibrant and violent. He ultimate- ly wants to reunite with his young son Fernando and leave the country, but finds himself a political target being hunted by a team of mercenaries. A mysterious woman named Elza and her compatriots in the country's under- ground resistance try to aid his effort. At the same time, the film Jaws — and cin- ema as a whole — is hugely popular, and when a "hairy leg" shows up in the belly of a shark, locals and the media run with the story, exaggerating the possibilities. The film occasionally leaps to present day, where a team of college students are studying Elza's archival recordings from the period, trying to make sense of its timeline and players just as the Brazilian government seizes the media from their university. The Secret Agent is nominated for four Oscars at the 98th Academy Awards, including Best Picture, International Feature Film, Casting and Actor in a Leading Role. The film was directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho and shot by cinematographer Evgenia Alexandrova using Arri's Alexa 35 as the film's primary camera, along with Panavision anamor- phic lenses. Colorist Dirk Meier helped the imagery achieve its raw energy and lush brilliance. Eduardo Serrano and Matheus Farias worked together to edit the film. Both had collaborated with Filho in the past. Serrano cut 2019's Bacarau and 2016's Aquarius, while Farias edited the 2023 documentary Pictures of Ghosts, and was working on a film about making The Secret Agent when Filho asked him to come on-board in order to help meet 2025's festival deadlines. "Eduardo had already started editing the film about a month before I joined, so when I came in, I began with the scenes that had heavier visual effects, like the hairy-leg scene, and the cat," shares Farias, referring to a house cat that has two faces, thanks to a genetic mutation. "After that, I moved on to editing the film following its chronology. Basically, we divided the film into blocks of sequences that made sense. And we worked that way until the end of the edit. Once we had the full cut of the film — which is not so different than the running time that the film has now — we started to work (on) each other's sequences, trying to find little pearls that might have been left out." "Kleber likes to work chronologically," adds Serrano. "We had a very, very short time to edit the film. That's why Matheus came along, because we wanted to go to Cannes and the film was a little bit later than the last films he made. We had around 15 minutes edited already when Matheus came in…It was very natural in the way that we divided the film. Kleber was a little bit in a panic because he was going to work on two sections of the film in different times in the chronology... That's kind of a new thing for him." The two editors live nearby each other in Brazil, but worked from their respective spaces — Serrano in an office and Farias from his apartment. In the morning, Filho worked with Farias in his editing room, and in the afternoons, he'd head to Serrano's office. Both cut the feature using Avid systems with PostLab, allowing them to collaborate with each other and their assistants. Editing spanned a total of 11 months, wrapping up in February of 2025. "I really wanted everyone to be in the same house," says Serrano of the editing process. "I had a spare room here and wanted Matheus to come in, but it didn't work out, so we then ended up working online using PostLab solution with Avid. So, yes, it was in the same city. We lived close together, but we still worked online." For Serrano, sound holds significant weight in his editorial decisions. He uses AI plug-ins for cleaning up troubled audio and adds reverb to give indoor locations depth and character. "My most important thing is really mixing in a way that I really feel the THE SECRET AGENT BY MARC LOFTUS THIS BRAZILIAN FEATURE IS NOMINATED FOR FOUR OSCARS, INCLUDING BEST PICTURE N EDITING Arri's Alexa 35 was the primary camera for the shoot.