Wagner Moura, Best Actor Award and Magnificent Secret Agent

In The Secret Agent , the hero's young son Marcelo (Wagner Moura) imagines his father as Jean-Paul Belmondo, the masterful spy in Philippe de Broca's The Magnificent . This is where the title of Kleber Mendoça Filho's film comes from. Thanks to the Best Actor Award he won at Cannes this year, Wagner Moura, 48, will be able to feel a little "magnificent" himself.

Kleber Mendoça Filho's film, set in the heart of the Brazilian dictatorship of the 1970s, plays the political thriller card to the hilt, while following in the footsteps of Wagner Moura, this melancholic widower who arrives in Recife in 1977, under a false name, and who tries to forget his former academic positions by rebuilding his life in the identity department, an administrative hideout.

Kleber Mendoça Filho accepted the award on stage: "I had the privilege, the chance to work with Wagner Moura ," he said. "He is an exceptional actor, but also an exceptional human being. I adore him. Thank you for this sign of recognition."

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Born in June 1976 in Salvador de Bahia, this Brazilian actor, director, and screenwriter became known to the general public in 2015 thanks to the series Narcos broadcast on Netflix. where he played drug lord Pablo Escobar , which earned him a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a Drama Series.

After starting out in theater, this newly graduated journalist eventually chose to become an actor. He landed a small role in Walter Salles's Broken April . He continued to film in his country. He was cast in Hector Babenco Carandiru 's film, which retraces the events of the massacre that took place in São Paulo prison in 1992. In 2007, his participation in the telenovela Paraiso Tropical made him a star in Brazil. But it was his role in the action film Elite Troop (1 and 2) by José Padilha (in 2007 and 2009) that brought him to international attention. He then starred in Neill Blomkamp's blockbuster Elysium, starring Matt Damon and Jodie Foster.

With The Secret Agent , Wagner Moura received a well-deserved Best Actor award, crowning a career as a committed actor. Present at Cannes, he had also declared: "I am very worried. How could I not be when the greatest world power has a fascist president at its head (...) The situation between Gaza and Israel, a very sensitive subject, must not help, but let us not underestimate the intimidation work of the Trump administration. We must wake up!"