Petra Costa on How Brazil Serves as a ‘Parable’ for the U.S.

Four years after being Oscar-nominated for “The Edge of Democracy,” director Petra Costa is back prodding at the current state of Brazilian politics with the documentary “Apocalypse in the Tropics,” which world premieres in the Out of Competition section at the Venice Film Festival.

The film, originally teased as a snapshot of former president Jair Bolsonaro’s infamously poor handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, morphed into a questioning of how democracies blur into theocracies and the role of the country’s growing evangelical movement in Brazil’s recent political turmoil. For perspective, in Brazil, the evangelical population was 5% in the 1980s. Now, it makes up for more than 30%.

“The film is a continuation of an investigation I began with ‘The Edge of Democracy,’” Costa tells Variety. Two of the film’s seminal scenes were captured during the shooting of her previous doc, including the opening scene showcasing a group of evangelists blessing the Congress and speaking in tongues ahead of Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment vote in 2016.

“A few days later I stumbled upon a mass gathering called the Prophetic Act, which gathered the most important pastors of Brazil. The event was organized by Silas Malafaia, Brazil’s most prominent televangelist,” Costa added. “I heard them saying God would take over the three branches of power, the executive, the legislative and the judiciary, and rid the country of the scum of the nation. That was when I realized the sentiment I had encountered inside the Congress was not a fringe, but one of the strongest political forces in the country.”

“Apocalypse in the Tropics” closely follows Malafaia over four years as his influence in the federal government grows. Costa obtained unprecedented access to the contentious figure, who can be seen in the film openly talking about how his council influenced Bolsonaro’s decisions while maintaining a lavish lifestyle that includes a private plane named “God’s Gift.”

“What is fascinating is that when we began filming Malafaia, he was one of Bolsonaro’s allies, but as the political crisis deepened, Bolsonaro started losing many of his allies and Malafaia’s importance grew tremendously,” Costa said of the pastor, emphasizing that, although the documentary focuses on the famed televangelist, there are many more pastors currently in Brazil who hold even bigger influence over the country’s politics.

The Brazilian director joined forces with Brad Pitt’s production company Plan B (“Moonlight,” “12 Years a Slave”), in what marks the company’s first documentary. “It was wonderful working with Jeremy Kleiner and Dede Gardner because they come from the world of fiction and have done films that portray American politics and history that I greatly admire. This was their first documentary and the way they looked at it was very different from the other executive producers who are more experienced with documentaries, but also very fresh and eye-opening. It was a nice combination. It made the film evolve in ways it wouldn’t have.”

“Apocalypse in the Tropics” begins its festival journey just over two months before the upcoming U.S. presidential elections, also marked by growing religious and conservative rhetoric. “The Edge of Democracy” had American audiences drawing parallel lines between what was happening with their southern cousin and their political turmoil. Costa’s latest is bound to do the same.

“Since ‘The Edge of Democracy,’ I see audiences viewing Brazil almost as a distorted mirror of what is happening not just in the United States but many countries around the world. It’s almost like a parable. You see a film about Brazilian politics and become frightened because we are all living through similar democratic crises and crises of the separation between church and state,” Costa says, drawing parallels between the two countries.

She highlights the “infiltration of what you can call the majority rule.” “People who believe that because they are the majority — and sometimes they may not even be the majority but they believe they are — it gives them a right to rule. They think that is democracy but that is not democracy. Democracy is also about the protection of minority rights. That’s why we have the Supreme Court, which is a point of attack for all these far-right movements.”

As for how she emotionally safeguards herself to spend years closely chronicling the growing far-right movement in Brazil, including manifestations by those who ask for the return of a military dictatorship, the director credits her “spirituality” as a much-needed buffer. “I’m a spiritual person. I wasn’t raised religious but it makes up a big part of my sense of self and meaning in life. The theological research that guided me through the making of this film was very enriching, spiritually, poetically and intellectually. I wouldn’t have been able to make a film just about the raw reality of the dystopian present we lived in. It was too painful.”