Review of The Edge of Democracy (2019)
Seen in 2019.
Director Petra Costa’s life as a metaphor for the history of Brazilian democracy, from the end of the junta to Jair Bolsonaro’s return to fascism. The main thread is the impeachment of Lula da Silva following Car Wash, an investigation led by the same judge—Sérgio Moro—who would ultimately convict Lula without hard evidence and go into politics.
This is one of the rare cases where the filmmaker injecting a dose of fluffy autobiography into an unrelated narrative is not harmful. It doesn’t help in any way, but it feels less selfish than usual. More annoying is the fact that Costa walks around interviewing people off camera and off the cuff, as if she were a political reporter. She isn’t, so her relationship to her subjects is not clear. There is enough primary material in here to give a pretty broad picture of what went on, but you don’t get a sense of the real extent of corruption in Lula’s government.