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Petra Costa Peers Into Evangelical Brazil

Petra Costa Peers Into Evangelical Brazil

“Apocalypse in the Tropics” (July 14, Netflix) is a sequel to Brazilian documentarian Petra Costa‘s “The Edge of Democracy,” which collected an Oscar nomination in 2020. Despite the plethora of opportunities and distractions that came Costa’s way, she felt compelled to return to Brazil and continue tracking the powerful forces challenging democracy in her country, in many ways parallel to the United States.

“It was a beautiful year in many ways,” she said on Zoom. “At the [Academy] nominee lunch, I met Brad Pitt, who would then become an executive producer of this film. And because of the recognition of ‘The Edge of Democracy,’ we were able to finance this film independently with an amazing group of equity investors and to document a time that would not have been possible were it not for this group of partners, because [President Jair] Bolsonaro had come to power and had finished with the National Film Agency in Brazil and cut all fundings for films.”

At first, Costa planned to make a film about her country’s unfolding COVID crisis. Brazil struggled during the pandemic, becoming the country with the second-highest number of deaths after the U.S., as Bolsonaro’s policies led 700,000 people to die. But the filmmakers soon discovered another story: the emerging power of the evangelical Christian movement.

“These leaders were both giving the communities physical, spiritual, and psychological help during this time of crisis,” said Costa, “but also saying things like, ‘Jesus cures COVID, so don’t use masks.’ Or, ‘It’s great that Bolsonaro won, because Bolsonaro is bringing chaos and therefore accelerating the end of the world and the return of Jesus Christ.’”

So Costa dug into this phenomenon. “We discovered that this type of apocalyptic thinking is not minor,” she said, “but is a great part of the fundamentalist evangelical population in Brazil, as well as in the United States. This rise of the infiltration of religion and politics is what the film is about.”

When Costa and her cameras entered the Brazilian Congress for the first time, she was met by a pastor who handed her a Bible and asked her “to accept Jesus,” she said. “To be at the center of democracy and to be cornered into converting into evangelicalism was the contradiction that this film wanted to explore.”

Costa not only dug into the behavior and power of the religious right in Brazil but lost sleep poring over apocalyptic texts in the Bible, especially the Book of Revelations, and the horrific art it spawned, from Fra Angelico and Pieter Bruegel to Hieronymus Bosch.

“Apocalyptic paintings were occupying the minds of Christians,” she said. “They were the horror films of the time for so many centuries, and they’re extremely cinematic. They show destruction and pain and and suffering in the most beautiful and heart-wrenching ways. The way we understand the word ‘apocalypse’ is key to how we approach our daily lives and how we approach geopolitics today.”

Petra CostaLaura Ahmed/January Images/Shutterstock

Central to the movie is the hugely popular evangelical Pastor Silas Malafaia, a powerful force in the campaign to elect Bolsonaro. “His life mission is to evangelize and to speak,” said Costa. “And he speaks to the press in general, and he agreed to give us access. When we began, he was one of many allies of Bolsonaro, and with time, his influence over the president grew to the point where you see him lip-syncing with the president in one of his most radical speeches in a rally. He might have actually written that speech.”

The Christian Nationalists still make up 20 percent of the Brazilian National Congress, with more than 100 congressmen. “Seventy percent of the evangelical population voted for Bolsonaro,” said Costa, “which is more than in any other segment, if you consider class, race, and religion. Seventy percent of evangelicals disapprove of [Liberal President] Lula, so it’s the same proportion, even though three years have passed. Lula has been trying to flirt with evangelicals, but since most of the evangelical leaders are still aligned with Bolsonaro and Bolsonarism as a phenomenon, Lula’s attempts have not been effective at all.”

Heading into the 2022 election, Lula started with a high margin, 30 points above Bolsonaro. “So people thought that Lula was going to win by a huge difference,” said Costa. “Until the week before, Lula still had a very wide margin from Bolsonaro. The polling agencies didn’t capture the voting intentions of the population, except for one. They showed Lula with a much higher margin than he actually had.”

Jair Bolsonaro, former President of Brazil (center), during interview broadcast at SBT Television channel, Sao Paulo, Brazil, 2024. ph: Francisco Proner©Netflix/Courtesy Everett Collection

So when Lula won, the right wing followed the Trump playbook, denying the election results. A mob overtook the Congress in a coup attempt on January 8. “We had a photographer in Brasilia to film this event as soon as we realized it was happening,” said Costa. “He was unfortunately attacked by protesters, so we had absolutely no footage from this time. And thankfully, he didn’t get hurt. We decided to use the images from the protesters themselves, because they were all filming as they attacked the Congress. And then our photographer, João Atala, who also shot the ‘Edge of Democracy,’ got inside the next day and was able to film the ruins.”

Unlike the U.S., Brazil took decisive action to prevent Bolsonaro from serving in office again. “A few months after this election, he was tried,” said Costa, “and was considered ineligible by our Electoral Court because of all the lies that were spread about our voting system during the campaign. He’s also facing trial now for the coup attempt that was discovered by the Federal Police, a coup attempt that aimed to assassinate Lula, his vice president, and the Supreme Court Justice, Alexandre de Moraes.”

Bolsonaro fled to Orlando, Florida, right before Lula’s inauguration, “because he didn’t want to pass the Presidential sash to Lula and recognize his defeat,” said Costa, “but then he returned. He’s friendly with Trump and with Bannon. And his son met with Bannon a few times, before the January 8 attempt, and Bannon gave tips.”

While Lula is still in power, everything is not fine. “Our democracies are in crisis around the world,” said Costa. “And Brazil was part of this global pandemic of the erosion of our democratic systems. There’s a 30 percent approval rate of Lula. Seventy percent of the evangelical population, the same that voted for Bolsonaro, probably disapproves of Lula’s government; many of them used to be his electoral base, the working class that used to vote for him, but that now votes not for economic reasons, but for values.”

‘Apocalypse in the Tropics’Netflix

The next election, in fall 2026, could go either way. “Anything can happen,” said Costa. “The zeitgeist is with the conservative national movements at this moment. Because they have this revolutionary fervor. Everyone realizes that the system is broken. And as I say in the film, while the progressives are offering small fixes, the conservative Christian nationalists are offering revolution, ‘let’s break everything.’ And that makes sense for the people and offers a solution to a system that is not working. Until we are able to fix this dissonance where neoliberalism is clearly broken at the moment, our democracies are kidnapped by capital, financial power, and these social media companies that are infiltrating and changing election results from night to day.”

A documentary aired on Netflix can have a global reach: 300 million subscribers. “The Edge of Democracy” was the second most-watched documentary in Brazil at the time, said Costa. “It was seen by more than 12 million people. No other documentary has been seen by so many Brazilians. What made me want to make both ‘The Edge of Democracy’ and ‘Apocalypse In the Tropics’ was this feeling that we as citizens are witnessing a kidnapping of our democracies. We’re suffering this physically, every morning waking up. I wanted to speak about that psychological feeling, not just a political phenomenon, but a phenomenon that affects us deeply as citizens. It’s traumatic. It’s dread, it’s dissociation, it’s fear, anxiety. But it’s important to not paralyze: then we really will be in the path of losing our fragile democracies. So I hope the film can inspire people into action rather than paralysis.”

Next up: Costa’s next film is a nonfiction Western.

“Apocalypse in the Tropics” premieres in theaters Friday, July 11 and on Netflix Monday, July 14.


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