Still: The Secret Agent - Kleber Mendonça Filho (photography Victor Juca)

Of all Dutch production outfits currently active, Lemming Film is surely the most outward-looking. Throughout its 30-year history, alongside its many local movies, the company has been involved in dozens of co-productions with directors from every corner of the globe. (Directors with whom Lemming has worked range from Lucrecia Martel in Argentina to Amat Escalante in Mexico, from Fatih Akin in Germany to Yorgos Lanthimos in Greece).

Now, for the first time, the company has taken on a Brazilian project. Lemming is the Dutch partner on Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Cannes competition entry, The Secret Agent**. This is a deeply layered political thriller set in 1977, late in the military dictatorship. Wagner Moura (a global star thanks to his bravura performance as Pablo Escobar in Narcos) plays a university professor who flees Sao Paulo for Recife to escape government surveillance.  

“We have been just very big fans of Kleber Mendonça’s prior works,” Lemming’s Head of Film, Erik Glijnis, explains the attraction of working on The Secret Agent. He rhapsodises about the director’s previous features Neighbouring Sounds (2012), Aquarius (2016) and Bacurau (2019), which have played in festivals from IFFR to Cannes.

“I really admire how Kleber is able to make something very political with different genre elements, therefore making the film inviting but also twisted and layered…I am a very big fan of the tonality and how playful the films are.”

French outfit MK2 tipped Lemming off that they were working with the Brazilian both as production company and as sales agent on The Secret Agent. Glijnis was immediately keen to become involved even though, initially, the plan had been to structure the project as a Brazilian-French co-production.

However, as time passed, the producers realised they needed extra support. This opened the opportunity for Lemming to enter. The Netherlands Film Fund provided some much-needed financing. At the same time, German outfit One Two Films also joined the film.

The Secret Agent shot entirely in Brazil but it still has strong Dutch elements. Early on, Glijnis and his team had given “elaborate written feedback” on the script in which they highlighted plot points that needed to be clearer for international audiences. By the time they were formally involved, the film was already close to shooting. 

Dutch sound wizard Tijn Hazen then oversaw the full sound design of the film. (Glijnis studied together with Hazen at film school and has worked with him several times before on such projects as Nocturne, Stranger in Paradise and Home).

The Secret Agent also includes a few stop-motion animated sequences featuring a “hairy leg.” (The producer gives no more details, other than to say that Brazilian folklore has stories about people who go missing and whose body parts are found inside sharks’ stomachs).

Intriguingly, the animation is done by Marleen Slot’s Amsterdam-based Viking Film with director Mascha Halberstad (the team behind 2022 stop motion animated hit, Oink**). Slot used to work at Lemming - and so there was already a strong connection there.

Australian but European based Laura Bell did the music supervision. “We had music recording and mixing in the Netherlands and so we had a lot of different musicians for the film, which was great,” Glijnis notes.

Meanwhile, Daan Janssen supervised the complete post-production from the Netherlands. There was also a Dutch visual effects company: FADS, comprising Luuk Meijer and Davis van Heeswijk.

“We were involved in image sound and music, pretty much all the different post elements.”

The burden was lifted by sharing these elements with the French and German partners - and the entire process was led by the Brazilian director. “It really needed strong collaboration and co-ordination.”

Working as a minority co-producer has clearly given Lemming a boost when it comes to the company’s own projects. It has meant that Glijnis and company founder Leontine Petit have the know-how and contacts to make their own Dutch movies on an increasingly ambitious scale. Their English-language Kafka-esque drama Mr. K**, directed by Tallulah Schwab, played at the Toronto International Film Festival last year while Ena Sendijarević’s 2023 feature Sweet Dreams**, set on an Indonesian sugar plantation in 1900, won multiple Golden Calf awards.

Now, Lemming has added another link to its network by partnering with CinemaScópio Produções, the Brazilian company run by Kleber Mendonça Filho and Emilie Lesclaux.

“The collaboration was great. Kleber is a really experienced director who is incredibly kind and also very precise. He’s really good with people. Everybody from the team loved him and loved working with him,” Glijnis concludes of Lemming’s work on the film (which will be distributed in Benelux by Imagine).

The Secret Agent is directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho. It is produced by CinemaScópio Produções (BR) in co-production with Lemming Film (NL), MK2 Productions (FR) and One Two Films (DE). Sales: MK2.

Find out more about the Dutch line-up at Cannes here.

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*film supported by the Netherlands Film Fund
**supported by the Netherlands Film Fund and Netherlands Production Incentive