Now Streaming: The Edge of Democracy

The Edge of Democracy opens with scenes of former Brazilian president Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva on his way to prison in 2018 amid massive street demonstrations both for and against his conviction.  As a newscaster says in a voiceover, “it was a stunning blow for a man who was elected president twice, and left office with an approval rating over 80%. In fact, he was already planning his comeback and was leading in the polls for presidential elections next year.”

Explaining how Lula’s dramatic downfall came to pass is the primary focus of the The Edge of Democracy, a 2019 film written, directed, produced and narrated by Petra Costa. Interweaving her own story of political awakening, Costa recounts the emergence of both Brazilian democracy in 1985 and the rise of Lula, a former steelworker, union organizer and founder of the Brazilian Workers’ Party. A transformational leader both within Brazil and on the larger world stage, Lula is clearly the hero of the film. That said, Costa was troubled from the outset by the compromises Lula made to win the presidency in 2002.

“I voted for Lula in hopes that he would ethically reform the political system. And here he was repeating practices that he had always criticized, and forming alliances with Brazil’s old oligarchy,” she says in voiceover. “But at the same time, I was seeing 20 million people leaving poverty. The program the government created, Bolsa Familia, provided around 30 dollars a month to each of Brazil’s poorest families. The number of Afro-Brazilians in university triples. Unemployment rates reach the lowest number in history. And while the 2008 financial crisis spreads, Brazil rises from the 13th to the 7th largest economy in the world.”

This is not a simple story and for anyone without a deep familiarity with Brazilian politics, there’s a lot to absorb. How a popular uprising that started over a rise in bus fares metastasized into a revolt against the Workers Party, which ultimately led to the impeachment of Lula’s successor, Dilma Rousseff, and to Lula’s conviction, is hard to pin down, as is the actual merit of the corruption charges against Lula. Did he, as he was convicted of doing, accept a beachfront property from a construction contractor? We don’t really know.

But what does become clear is that the forces that combined to oust Rousseff and jail Lula were deeply connected to Brazil’s old guard and fueled by the same kind of reactionary, right-wing populism that has emerged of late in other parts of the world.  

 “A Greek writer said that democracy is only working when the rich feel threatened,” Costa says in the film. “Otherwise, oligarchy takes over. From father to son, from son to grandson, from grandson to great grandson, and so successively. We are a republic of families. Some control the media, others control the banks. They own the sand, the rock, the iron. And all so often it happens that they get tired of democracy, of its rule of law.”

Costa does an excellent job of not only unpacking this complex history, but also in personalizing and contextualizing the narrative.

“Brazilian democracy and I are almost the same age,” she says in the film. “And I thought that in our thirties we would both be standing on solid ground.”

The film concludes with the election of Jair Bolsonaro, a right-wing hardliner nostalgic for the old days of military control.

“I fear our democracy was nothing but a short-lived dream,” says Costa.

 The Edge of Democracy is available now on Netflix and has been nominated for multiple IDA Awards, including Best Feature and Best Writing, and Ms. Costa has been nominated in the Best Director category.