Stream It Or Skip It?

Apocalypse in the Tropics (now streaming on Netflix) is a heavy, heavy documentary, the follow-up to Brazilian director Petra Costa’s 2019 must-see Oscar-nominee The Edge of Democracy. For the first film, Costa enjoyed stunning access to outgoing Brazilian president Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva and his successor, Dilma Rousseff, both of the leftist Workers Party – and watched as the former was jailed, the latter was impeached and far-right military man Jair Bolsonaro took the presidency, leading the country into social and political turmoil. With Apocalypse, the filmmaker illustrates the link between the far right and the Christian fundamentalist movement in Brazil, and how evangelicals’ belief in the end times contributes to the ongoing erosion of democracy. 

The Gist: Equally as fascinating as the contents of this film is how Costa, whose parents were liberal activists in the 1970s, gains repeated access to Silas Malafaia, a Brazilian TV evangelist who’s depicted in this doc as one of Bolsonaro’s puppeteers. Her camera sits with him over breakfast in his posh home, follows him to political and religious rallies – which quite purposefully blend together – and captures him behind the wheel of his BMW, ranting at a motorcyclist whose erratic driving Malafaia interprets as a form of religious persecution. It’s far from a flattering portrayal of Malafaia, who represents Brazil’s rapidly growing fundamentalist Christian movement, which is increasingly influential in the country’s politics. The group proved to be the tipping point for the 2018 election of Bolsonaro to the presidency, and Malafaia likes to take credit for that. And per this documentary, he’s not wrong.

As she did with The Edge of Democracy, Costa frequently lingers on images sacred to Brazilians, narrating poetically overtop about Brazil’s very tenuous grip on democracy. The key, she asserts, is the marked blurring of church and state, specifically with regards to the evangelical population. Her camera studies medieval paintings depicting the events of the Book of Revelations, when Jesus returns to Earth and armageddon begins, with nonbelievers being massacred by demons. This is what evangelicals believe, and Petra asserts that the subtext of the movement reads like so: Electing a chaotic wannabe despot like Bolsonaro will accelerate the arrival of the end times, ending the suffering of our current reality and creating Heaven on Earth.

Costa tracks the history of the movement to U.S. intervention, whether it’s evangelist Billy Graham preaching to tens of thousands of Brazilians in the 1960s or the CIA undermining Catholic movements that pushed for social justice for the poor. She introduces the idea of dominionism, pushed by Malafaia, which dictates that evangelicals should take over all three branches of democratic government. She shows how Bolsonaro’s response to the Covid pandemic wasn’t science, but prayer – prayer that did nothing to stop hundreds of thousands of Brazilians from succumbing to the virus. She follows Lula da Silva as he’s released from prison – the charges he faced were shaky, more political than legal – and runs against Bolsonaro in the 2022 presidential election. Her camera is in the street as the nominees campaign, the secularist Lula bending toward religious voters to get their support. She watches as the regular election proceeds to a runoff, which Lula wins, prompting Malafaia and Bolsonaro to rage, denying the election results and inciting an attempted insurrection on the capital. 

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: One of the absolute best films of 2024 – I’m Still Here, a Eunice Paiva biopic and riveting dramatization of political persecution during the junta regime in 1970s Brazil. 

Performance Worth Watching: Well, it’s more hearing Costa than seeing her – her narration is as profound as Werner Herzog’s, and her access to key figures in Brazilian politics is near-miraculous. (And yes, I fully grok the irony of that statement.)

Memorable Dialogue: Costa on Bolsonaro: “When I first filmed him, he was lower-rung far-right, running towards any camera.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Apocalypse in the Tropics is Costa’s logical progressive step after The Edge of Democracy, which was as personal to the filmmaker’s emotions and experiences as it was revelatory about the rise of fascistic tendencies in Brazil. Of course, the political strife she documents mirrors that of many other countries, perhaps none more so than the U.S., with the Trump-inspired election denial and insurrection preceding Brazil’s by two years, and the presence of evangelical thought in politics coming to prominence during George W. Bush’s regime. 

So we get amusing observations – Lula makes his own coffee while Malafaia is served bounteous feasts – stirred into a troubling narrative in which Bolsonaro’s potential use of military force against his own people is equated with the first steps of a holy war. Costa laments democracy’s increasingly troublesome grip on her country, and her gaze is unwavering as the camera captures Bolsonaro supporters praying in the streets on election night – and Lula supporters doing the same. Whose prayers will be answered? Lula’s win was a glimmer of hope, but through Costa’s lens, it doesn’t feel comforting. The people and their bizarre belief in righteous destruction haven’t disappeared. The victory for the Workers Party may be naught but a speedbump on the way to the evangelical’s beloved apocalypse. The documentary concludes not with a celebration, but a sad perusal of the destruction at the capital building after the attempted insurrection. Now what?, the images seem to say. Now what?

Our Call: Apocalypse in the Tropics is a riveting and scary portrait of the crumbling wall between church and state, the separation of which is absolutely fundamental to democracy. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.