2020-01-23 The Hollywood Reporter

PLAYBOOK

AWARDS SEASON

2020

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 36 JANUARY 2020 AWARDS 1

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LIVING ON THE EDGE

DOCUMENTARY

A

n impeachment trial

that divides the country.

Large crowds chanting to

“lock up” their right-wing

candidate’s political opponent.

And the rise of an authoritarian

leader who threatens to undercut

democracy and the rule of law.

Sound familiar?

In Netflix’s The Edge of

Democracy, nominated for best

documentary feature, Brazilian

writer-director Petra Costa delves

into her country’s messy politi-

cal history — and in the process

presents a dark “distorted mirror”

of the myriad crises facing the

U.S. today. With remarkable access

to former Presidents Luiz Inácio

Lula da Silva, Dilma Rousseff

and Michel Temer — as well as

the current hardline president,

Jair Bolsonaro — Costa docu-

ments Brazil’s fraying democracy

through the prism of her family’s

own history, contrasting the views

of her right-wing, industrialist

grandparents with the ideals of her

left-wing, freedom-fighter parents.

What was your reaction to being

nominated?

I was with my mother, my boy-

friend and my grandfather, and

Brazilian director Petra Costa, earning her first Oscar nomination for Netflix’s documentary

The Edge of Democracy, explains why Americans should view the film as a warning shot

By Adam Benzine

on a call with my producer Joanna

[Natasegara]. We’d had a very

depressing call just beforehand,

consoling ourselves that this

wouldn’t happen and thinking

about how we would survive the

next step. We were really not

expecting this at all, it was such a

huge surprise. We were scream-

ing like crazy.

How have viewers reacted to

the film in Brazil?

The film has been explosive

in Brazil. There was one

tweet [about the film] per

minute for the first month

of release, and Netflix recently

announced that it was the second-

most-watched documentary

on its platform in 2019. It really

triggered a huge political debate.

I’ve received messages that were

really gratifying from people, but

of course there were also attacks of

all sorts. The nomination became

the most talked-about topic on

Twitter in Brazil. And there were

some interesting comments from

Bolsonaro himself, saying that

the film is not a documentary but

a fiction, and only fit for vultures

to eat. He also said that he hasn’t

seen the film.

Have Lula da Silva or Dilma

Rousseff had an opportunity to see

the film?

Yes. Lula saw the film in prison

— more than once, I heard. And

Dilma also saw the film; we had

an agreement to show it to her

before it was finished. And they

both had positive responses to it.

What lessons should U.S.

audiences draw from

the documentary?

The film has so many

parallels with what is

happening in the United

States, it feels like a dis-

torted mirror of the situation in

America. From the “lock her up”

movement that attacked Hillary

Clinton, which was a mirror to

what happened to Lula in Brazil,

to the intense polarization in the

streets and inside Congress with

families not speaking to each

other. The difference, though, is

that the impeachment of Donald

Trump is at the heart of why the

impeachment law was invented,

to prevent this type of abuse

of power, while in Brazil, the

impeachment was for a techni-

cality — a misdeed that most

presidents had committed before,

which does not rise to the level of

impeachment. But what we see

in both cases is how some parties

are ready to abuse the consti-

tution to try to destroy their

opponents at all costs.

This is your third personal film

after 2009’s Undertow Eyes and

2012’s Elena. Why did you decide

to tell the story through the lens

of your family, rather than tak-

ing the more traditional historical

documentary route?

All my films come from a per-

sonal perspective. I’m interested

in the concept of trauma and how

it shapes us as human beings —

how powerful it can be to dive

into one’s own trauma and then

find the energy and the light that

can come from that. And in this

case, I was interested in political

trauma. My generation grew up

in an age of optimism, believing

democracy was here to stay. And,

similar to what the United States

went through in 2016, there was

an earthquake that made us feel

that basic human rights and a

line of ethics that separates the

humane from the inhumane,

guaranteed through decades of

fighting [for it], were suddenly

starting to dissolve. And the

trauma I felt — which I think

many people felt in the U.S. with

the election of Donald Trump and

in the U.K. with Brexit — was the

sensation of losing your future

and your idea of what your coun-

try was and would be.

You credit three co-writers

alongside yourself. How did you

approach writing the film?

It was a back-and-forth process.

There were some parts that I wrote

while I was in Brasilia, in the heat

of the event. And then an amazing

editing team helped a lot with the

writing and the rewriting. Carol

Pires, a journalist who works with

The New York Times, covered the

entire impeachment process and

helped a lot in getting the political

context right, and also in finding

the right measure of how much

to put myself into the film or not,

along with [co-writers] Moara

Passoni and David Barker. We were

Costa