Entertainment
Hulu Subscribers Have 1 Day To Watch 2025’s Best Political Thriller Before the Oscars
Cinephiles, rejoice! It’s officially Oscars weekend, with the 98th Academy Awards taking place at the Los Angeles Dolby Theatre this Sunday evening. Paul Thomas Anderson’s politically poignant One Battle After Another and Ryan Coogler’s acclaimed vampire flick Sinners are favorites to take home the most prizes, especially considering the latter’s breaking of the record for most nominations. But both face tough competition for a host of top films from the past year, including the Joel Edgerton-led Train Dreams, the Danish-Norwegian drama Sentimental Value, the visually stunning Frankenstein, and the genre-blending slow-burner The Secret Agent.
The latter, written and directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho, is the second Brazilian movie in two years to be nominated for Best Picture, after I’m Still Here became the country’s first to do so in 2025. Earlier this year, Wagner Moura picked up the Golden Globe for Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama for his leading turn in The Secret Agent, a performance for which he has also earned an Academy Award nod. The film has also earned nominations in the Best Casting and Best International Feature Film categories. The film also won four prizes at the Cannes Film Festival, including in the Best Director and Best Actor categories.
Ahead of this year’s ceremony, with the film bidding to take home at least one Golden Statue, The Secret Agent is quietly impressing on the streaming charts. At the time of writing, the movie is one of the most-streamed on Hulu in the U.S., a list topped by Predator: Badlands. A synopsis of The Secret Agent reads:
“Brazil, 1977. Marcelo, a technology expert in his early 40s, is on the run. Hoping to reunite with his son, he travels to Recife during Carnival but soon realizes that the city is not the safe haven he was expecting.”
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‘The Secret Agent’ Is a Critical Smash
Ever since its Cannes premiere last May, The Secret Agent has received gushing praise from critics across the world. This is illustrated best on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, where the movie boasts a near-perfect 98% score from critics and an 83% score from audiences. The consensus on the site reads, “A thematically rich and visually arresting political thriller, The Secret Agent blends grindhouse stylization with biting social commentary to weave a vividly dangerous yet darkly human tale.”
The Secret Agent is streaming on Hulu. Stay tuned to Collider for more streaming stories.
- Release Date
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November 26, 2025
- Runtime
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158 minutes
- Director
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Kleber Mendonça Filho
- Writers
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Kleber Mendonça Filho