The Edge of Democracy (2019)

Brazil has been embroiled in political turbulence over the last seven years that has left citizens questioning whether democracy would ever return. The rise of the populist right has led to one left-wing president being impeached and another imprisoned, with right-wing Jair Bolsonaro now currently heading up the government.

Filmmaker Petra Costa helmed this Oscar-nominated documentary, and it’s a personal as well as a political story for her – her own parents were left-wing activists who were heavily involved in the overthrowing of the dictatorship in 1985.

Now, so many years later, Costa has observed the fall of the left in Brazil, with Dilma Roussef being impeached after being democratically elected in 2014, and then with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the Workers’ Party being sentenced to nine years in prison for corruption in 2017. At the same time, the rise of the elitist right seems to have come at the expense of the democratic fabric of the country.

In an interview with NPR, she said, “We are a republic of families. Some control the media. Others control the banks. They own the sand, the rock, the iron. And all so often, it happens that they get tired of democracy, of its rule of law.”

Since earning its Oscar nomination, Costa’s film has come under attack, with a statement from the President’s office accusing her of being “an anti-Brazil activist peddling a narrative that is full of lies.”

The Guardian says, “Costa manages to craft an intimate primer about the state’s descent into populism and the fraying of the country’s democratic fabric.”