There’s a tangle of peculiar storylines on the periphery of Kleber Mendonça Filho’s “The Secret Agent,” but maybe none as strange as the disembodied hairy leg that pops up throughout, eventually coming to life to stalk the streets of Recife. It’s an odd, fantastical moment in what’s otherwise a very grounded film, but for Mendonça, it’s also deeply connected to his own childhood.
Explaining the origins of the leg in a new featurette that IndieWire exclusively premieres, Mendonça said he remembered reading stories about hairy, disembodied legs while growing up in fascist Brazil during the 1970s. Years later, he would discover that these stories were an urban legend created by a journalist to talk about police brutality and homophobia.
“When you look back to the newspapers in the archives, you can find the original articles about the hairy leg, and they were written with a straight face,” Mendonça said. “So it was almost like a police article, but the hairy leg would be the perpetrator of violent acts, and that became a sensation.”
In the featurette, Mendonça spoke with “Frankenstein” director Guillermo del Toro about creating the leg in the film, and creating a movie that used the tools of international cinema while remaining heavily rooted in a Brazilian context.
“When I see your movies, I see this absolutely beautiful mixing of imaginations,” del Toro told Mendonça. “It very much is cinema.”
To create the leg seen in “The Secret Agent,” Mendonça contracted the Dutch stop motion animation studio Holy Motion to work on the film. The studio sent several tests before they nailed Mendonça’s desired look — for the leg to be slimy, disgusting, and very hairy.
“I really love the way it moves, because the first thing many people suggested was ‘do it in CGI,’” Mendonça said. “It was a great experience. I really love when films depart reality, and they go into some new mode. Just because it’s the state of our minds.”
“The Secret Agent” received four nominations at the 2026 Oscars, where it will compete for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Casting, and Best International Feature Film.
Watch the full conversation between Mendonça and del Toro, an IndieWire exclusive, below.
