The 5 rules that guided the making of 'The Secret Agent,' according to its director

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Brazilian filmmaker and die-hard cineaste Kleber Mendonça Filho relies on a certain creative method.“I will go wherever my thoughts are taking me,” he said recently over coffee at a West Hollywood hotel.

“And hopefully it will make sense to you,” he adds with a laugh.But he’s serious.

“It’s really the pleasure of adding ideas to other ideas, making free associations.”That’s how the research for his previous film, the essay documentary “Pictures of Ghosts,” which centered on memories personal and cinematic of his eclectic hometown of Recife, led to “The Secret Agent,” his Cannes-awarded thriller starring Wagner Moura.Set in 1977, during Brazil’s dictatorship, and against the backdrop of the country’s riotous Carnival, it rests on a classic narrative in which Moura’s widowed researcher Marcelo hides from hired killers while conducting his own private inquiry.

But at heart it’s a sinuous expression of its writer-director’s notions about people, movies, places and the past.Mendonça Filho has seen nearly everything his accomplished countryman has made, but knew there was something still to be tapped.“Many of his roles are proactive,” he says.

“I wanted a classic hero in a different way.Not carrying a gun.

Weighing his options.Able to love.

Able to show hatred.It made me think of Roger Thornhill in ‘North by Northwest.’ He doesn’t know what is going on, but he’s compelling and easy to identify with.

So I needed Wagner’s command of the screen, how the camera loves him, to see him thinking and emoting not in an overt way.It was a challenge, and when we make films, we are looking for challenges.”Mendonça Filho had long heard of houses like the one in which Marcelo hides out, unassuming sanctuaries that shielded people from the dictatorship’s reach.

But he was also inspired by how people came together during COVID-19.“Wit...