‘The Secret Agent’ Casting Director on Populating Recife, Brazil, a ‘Crazy Place Full of Interesting Faces’

The inaugural Best Casting category at the Oscars was not without its surprises. In a category that otherwise went entirely to English-language films, Gabriel Domingues was recognized for his work in the Brazilian drama “The Secret Agent.”

Despite making the 10-person shortlist for the casting category, he chose not to
watch the Oscar-nominations livestream. “I had set up two interviews for the
announcement day,” Domingues said. “I was like, ‘OK, if I get nominated, that would be amazing, but if I do not, I have to work anyway.’ Of course, when I got nominated, I received 200 messages and many phone calls.”

While his fellow nominees each have casting resumes that date back to the 1990s, Domingues didn’t get his first casting-assistant credit until 2016’s Aquarius. It was there that he supported casting director Marcelo Caetano and began working with Kleber Mendonça Filho, the film critic turned filmmaker who wrote and directed “The Secret Agent.”

“I was super young. I’d just left film school, and I was starting to understand cinema and the work with actors, which was super important for me,” Domingues said. “We did many auditions around Brazil, and we did a very long process of investigation and approaching different kinds of actors. It was a very important moment for me to create my methods of casting because we were so free.”

Nearly a decade later, Domingues and Mendonça Filho reunited for “The Secret Agent,” also nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor (Wagner Moura) and Best International Feature (representing Brazil). By the time the project rolled around, Domingues had quite a few more notches in his casting belt — not just small-scale features but Brazilian projects with large budgets backed by the likes of Netflix and Amazon. In casting “The Secret Agent,” though, he had something that made his job easier: Mendonça Filho.

“All the actors want to work with him — like, the majority here in Brazil,” he said.“Even people I don’t know came to me to present themselves to be in this movie.”

Mendonça Filho brought a few names with him from the project’s inception. The filmmaker wrote the lead part of Armando for Moura, a longtime friend with whom he commiserated over Brazil’s far-right politics during Jair Bolsonaro’s reign.

In Mendonça Filho’s 2019 film “Bacurau,” Tânia Maria’s infectious personality as an extra was “so special that they gave her two lines,” according to Domingues, leading the director to write the first-time actress, now 79, a full firecracker of a part in “The Secret Agent” as Dona Sebastiana. He likewise wrote the role of Hans specifically with the late Udo Kier (another “Bacurau” alum) in mind.

Yet one of “The Secret Agent’s” greatest strengths is its giant ensemble, bursting with parts big and small that enrich the texture of Recife (Mendonça Filho’s hometown and the central setting for the film). Domingues pointed to “maybe 10” castings in this film that he puts in his personal hall of fame — among them Robson Andrade as young dissident Clóvis and Robério Diógenes as corrupt police chief Euclides. He gave a special shout-out to Carlos Francisco (“an icon of Brazilian cinema”), who plays Armando’s father-in-law, Sr. Alexandre.

Domingues also spoke to the specific difficulty of finding the right person for Henrique Castro Ghirotti, an immoral and well-connected man whose personal and political grudges send Armando into hiding. In the end, the part went to Luciano Chirolli, a respected theater actor who exudes quiet menace and terrifying pettiness.

“The character represents a lot about villainy, some evil idea of people who are occupying positions of power at that time,” Domingues said. “We didn’t want the person who played that to be a very obvious idea of violence, which is a very difficult thing when you are casting a movie — to not go the easy way, the obvious way.”

Actors like these helped Domingues flesh out the Recife of the 1970s, a city filled with both community and corruption. The casting director said he was “honored” to help Mendonça Filho render his hometown in such a way.

“People who work with him, they agree that Recife is one of the most interesting places in the world,” Domingues said. “Recife is this amazing and super interesting and crazy, absolutely crazy place. And this crazy place is full of interesting faces.”

Standing among the first casting directors recognized at the Academy Awards brings Domingues both immense gratitude and a fair bit of nerves.

“Last week, I was terrified,” he said less than two weeks after earning his nomination. “But this week, I’m like, ‘Well, I’m gonna have fun with this.’”

At the same time, he realizes that this recognition acknowledges far more people than just himself, even if his name is the one that could go on the statuette.

“I represent, in a way, many of the actors of the movie,” he said. “I know where they came from. They struggled a lot to be in this movie. They worked really hard. So I’m not alone. I’m with them. I’m super proud of being in this position to represent them, because it wasn’t easy.”

This story first ran in the Down to the Wire issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine, which will be published Feb. 19, 2026.

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