One might assume that an Oscar-contending 2025 documentary that features footage of citizens storming a government building in their nation’s capitol, with the aim of overturning a free and fair presidential election and therefore democracy itself, would be about the events of Jan. 6, 2021 in Washington, D.C. However, the doc, Apocalypse in the Tropics, is actually about the events of — and leading up to — a similar incident that occurred almost exactly two years later, on Jan. 8, 2023, in Brasilia, the capital of Brazil.
During a Q&A (which you can watch below) at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival (where her film was featured on the fest’s annual Docs to Watch panel), Apocalypse in the Tropics director Petra Costa — who was previously Oscar-nominated for 2019’s The Edge of Democracy, another film about political turmoil in Brazil — spoke about the personal and political circumstances that led her to chronicle, in her latest film, which is now streaming on Netflix, the rise of Christian nationalism in Brazil and its effect on the nation’s politics and populace.
Apocalypse in the Tropics centers on three individuals: political rivals Jair Bolsonaro and Luiz Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva, who have both served as Brazil’s president, and televangelist Silas Malafaia, who might have more power and influence than either of them. As Costa discusses during this Q&A, she spent four years on the project, and within it varying amounts of time with each of the aforementioned subjects, capturing incredible behind-the-scenes footage and candid insights into their motivations.
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In the end, following Lula’s victory over Bolsonaro in Brazil’s 2022 presidential election, Bolsonaro, with Malafaia’s assistance, sewed civil unrest which, just days after Lula’s inauguration, resulted in riots that tested the durability of Brazil’s democracy. In the end, Bolsonaro’s rioting backers were quelled, and he was sentenced to a 27-year prison term that began last month. But it remains to be seen if lessons have been learned that will prevent a repeat of what happened in Brasilia.
As Costa puts it, “If countries like the United States, Brazil, Israel and India fail to face the encroachment of religion into politics — and clearly re-establish the separation between church and state — I do not believe today’s democracies will survive.”
