PETRA COSTA | BRAZIL, USA, DENMARK | 2024 | 110 MIN | PORTUGUESE
Filmmaker Petra Costa revisits her nation’s turbulent political climate and the rise of Christian nationalism in Brazil in this eye-opening documentary, a phenomenon that eerily echoes extremist trends in American politics. Apocalypse in the Tropics begins roughly where her Oscar-nominated film The Edge of Democracy left off: with the meteoric rise of far-right outsider candidate Jair Bolsonaro, whose victory in the 2018 presidential election paved the way for an unprecedented incursion of evangelical Christianity into electoral politics. Even more than Bolsonaro, the film belongs to bullish TV pastor Silas Malafaia, a feared political power broker with a single-minded determination to bridge faith and politics. Costa analyzes these troubling developments with a cool but impassioned eye, culminating in a nail-biting 2022 election in which not just the presidency—but Brazil’s democracy—hangs in the balance. It’s a timely and sobering examination of a nation whose struggles with disinformation, political polarization, and anti-democratic sentiment bear disturbing resemblances to our own.
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