Page 40 - The Hollywood Reporter (January 2020)

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LIVING ON THE EDGE
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
n impeachment trial
A 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
T H E
AWARDS SEASON
P L A Y B O O K
D O C U M E N T A R Y
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.
H O L L Y W O O D R E P O R T E R 3 6 J A N U A R Y
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
Costa 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,
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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. EDGE: COURTESY OF NETFLIX. COSTA: DAVID BECKER/GETTY IMAGES FOR NETFLIX. FACTORY: STEVEN BOGNAR/NETFLIX. CAVE: COURTESY OF NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC. SAMA: COURTESY OF PBS. HONEYLAND: LJUBO STEFANOV/NEON.
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
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