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It is glimpsed in just a few scenes in The Secret Agent, the Brazilian film nominated for four Oscars and two Baftas, but that has been enough exposure for a vintage yellow T-shirt to become the latest object of desire among Brazilian progressives.
The garment, worn on screen by Wagner Moura, was first produced in 1978 by Pitombeira dos Quatro Cantos, a carnival group in the coastal city of Olinda, which until recently would sell just a few dozen a month.
But since the release of the gripping political thriller set during a brutal two-decade military dictatorship – and especially since Moura won best actor at the Golden Globes – the shirts have been selling out daily.
“We never expected so many people to be after it. Dozens of new shirts arrive from the factory almost every day, and almost every day they sell out,” said Matheus Camarotti, Pitombeira’s director of communications.
Given the frenzy it is generating among leftists across the country, some already believe the T-shirt will still be prominent in October, when the leftist president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, will seek re-election.
Lula himself recently received one of the T-shirts, which some see as a reaction to the appropriation of Brazil’s green-and-yellow national football shirt by far-right supporters of former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is behind bars after being convicted of attempting a coup.
Many Bolsonaro supporters still defend the 1964–1985 military regime whose atrocities are depicted in the film, and The Secret Agent’s success has been embraced above all by the Brazilian left.
Since the film was released in Brazil last November, more than 10,000 T-shirts have been sold – compared with fewer than 3,000 in an entire year previously – both online and to dozens of people who now visit Pitombeira’s headquarters each day.
A 489-year-old city of brightly coloured facades and colonial architecture, Olinda neighbours Recife, the capital of Pernambuco, in north-east Brazil, and together they are among the country’s most popular carnival destinations, receiving 3.5 million visitors in 2025.
Unlike the world-famous parades in Rio de Janeiro, Pernambuco’s carnival does not rely on samba but on frevo, a rhythm also rooted in Afro-Brazilian influences but, unlike samba’s hallmark polyrhythms, shaped by the binary pulse of military marches, with a heavier use of brass instruments such as trumpets and trombones.
Frevo choreography is also markedly different, characterised by jumps, crouches and the use of colourful umbrellas – the cast and crew of The Secret Agent even performed the steps on the red carpet at the Cannes film festival, where Pernambuco native Kleber Mendonça Filho won best director.
The film’s costume designer, Rita Azevedo, said the idea of dressing the protagonist in a Pitombeira shirt emerged during extensive research of photographic archives showing Pernambuco in the 1970s.
In the movie, the T-shirt appears when Moura’s character, Marcelo, an academic hiding from the corrupt military dictatorship, takes refuge in a housing complex where a small community is also seeking shelter.
“He arrives there in the middle of carnival, so I believe the shirt was a gift given to him as a welcoming gesture from the longer-standing residents,” said Azevedo.
For Pitombeira, the “gift”, which they only discovered by watching the film, could not have come at a better moment.
It costs about £12,600 to take the group’s 150 members to the two parades it stages during carnival, and Pitombeira has traditionally relied mainly on support from local government, which often arrives late, and to a lesser extent on souvenirs such as caps and T-shirts.
With record T-shirt sales, the group has already covered the cost of this year’s parades and expects soon to set aside the funds for next year’s as well.
Each shirt costs about £8 on the group’s website, and a brand has bought the rights to sell a fancier version for £21, but an increasing number of pirated versions are being sold in street markets. Pitombeira has urged people not to buy them because they provide no support for the group.
Azevedo said she was pleased that the film’s success was helping the group. “We borrowed these visual and aesthetic records, and being able to give something back in this way, knowing that the sales will ensure Pitombeira can put on its carnival, is priceless,” she said.
