Brazilian actor and filmmaker Wagner Moura — internationally known for his role as Pablo Escobar in ‘Narcos’ — discussed his work as a director on political films including ‘Marighella’ in an extended Democracy Now interview. Moura’s directorial work engages specifically with Latin America’s history of authoritarian governments and armed resistance movements — a tradition of politically engaged filmmaking that sits within the Latin American cine político tradition.

THE MARIGHELLA FILM  

‘Marighella’ (2019, released internationally 2021) tells the story of Carlos Marighella, a Brazilian communist politician and guerrilla leader who was killed by the dictatorship’s secret police in 1969. The film was banned in Brazil by government censors before its release — the attempted censorship itself becoming a significant story. Its international release provided it visibility it might not have achieved otherwise.

Moura’s work engages the specific ethical question that Latin American political filmmakers have historically confronted: how to document and humanize resistance movements that used violence, in political contexts where that violence was a response to state violence. This is not a question with a simple answer; Moura’s films engage it rather than resolving it.

Moura played the man who built the world’s most notorious drug cartel. Then he made a film about the man who led an armed resistance against a Brazilian dictatorship. His choices as an actor and director are a specific kind of political engagement.

CONFIDENCE: HIGH

Wagner Moura Democracy Now interview, filmography including Narcos and Marighella, and censorship context are from confirmed reporting and established public record.

SOURCES

▸  Democracy Now — Wagner Moura interview, August 26, 2026