Overview
- The feature from Kleber Mendonça Filho reaches cinemas on February 20, 2026 following a decorated festival run and a campaign positioned for four Oscar categories, including Best Picture, International Feature, Actor and Casting.
- Wagner Moura leads as Marcelo in a performance that has earned major prizes and a Best Actor Oscar nomination, identified in Spanish coverage as the first for a Brazilian performer in that category.
- Set in Recife in 1977 under Brazil’s military rule, the film centers historical memory rather than didactic recounting to evoke the era’s climate of fear and repression.
- The style fuses political thriller mechanics with cinephile references and striking, eerie images reported by critics, including a shark-found limb, a two-headed cat and a scarred German tailor played by Udo Kier.
- The narrative runs about two hours and forty minutes with non-linear leaps into the present, touches on student inquiries into the dictatorship, and features the Sao Luiz cinema as a recurring refuge.