Apocalypse in the Tropics

When does a democracy end, and a theocracy begins? In “Apocalypse in the Tropics”, Petra Costa investigates the increasingly powerful grip that faith leaders hold over politics in Brazil. She gains extraordinary access to the country’s top political leaders, including President Lula and former President Bolsonaro, as well as to Brazil’s most famous televangelist: a larger-than-life pastor who plays the puppet master to the far-right leader.

The film chronicles the profound role the evangelical movement has played in Brazil’s recent political turmoil, and it also grapples with the apocalyptic theology that drives the movement’s chief protagonists. As in her Oscar® nominated ”The Edge of Democracy”, Costa documents a time of profound confusion and despair with lucidity and a poetic eye. Weaving together past and present, she immerses us in the contradictory realities of a young democracy that is hanging on by a thread, and, in so doing, holds up a mirror to the rest of the world.