The Edge of Democracy (Democracia em Vertigem) by Petra Costa (review)

Petra Costa’s documentary The Edge of Democracy presents the 2016 impeachment of Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff as a continuation of the old politics that led to the civil-military coup of 1964. It interprets the impeachment as a result of the institutional amnesia that followed the democratic transition initiated in 1979. The lack of punishment of crimes committed by the dictatorship is directly related to the deeply ingrained promiscuous relationship between the nation’s political and economic elites. Costa links the nonpunishment of the human rights abuses of the dictatorial period to the rise of the far-right president Jair Bolsonaro. The documentary also relates the latter to the growing influence of evangelical fundamentalists and armed militant groups in Brazilian politics. Nevertheless, the uniqueness of the documentary lies in Costa’s approach to address such sensitive and complex issues. Using the formula of a documentary essay, Costa intentionally blurs the line between memoir and journalism, inserting herself in the narrative. The Edge of Democracy is personal, original, and passionate.

Costa brings a sui generis perspective to the table by taking advantage of the complex ambiguities of her family’s background, which she ingeniously inter-weaves with major events of Brazilian history in a heartfelt first-person voice-over. On one hand, her maternal family is a token for the privileged economic elites who supported the 1964 coup and have since then shaped politics by funding politicians who enact their agenda and safeguard their interests. On the other hand, her parents’ political activism during the dictatorship led to their arrest and years of living in hiding, making them a token for the idealistic youth who put themselves at risk by fighting against an authoritarian and violent regime. Furthermore, Costa adds another layer of reflection by making an analogy between the development of Brazilian politics in the post—dictatorship era and her own process of growing political awareness: the director and Brazilian democracy are roughly the same age and have developed and matured together. Costa grew up believing Brazilian democracy was a right earned through the political activism of her parents’ generation. As she grew older and more critical, the director realized this right could not be taken for granted, as Brazil’s young democracy is fragile and vulnerable to power games.

The originality of the documentary results from a thorough interpretation of Brazilian politics crafted from a careful collage of more than 6,000 hours of footage. While some of the scenes use mainstream media news, most of the film shows footage collected by the director and her team, who made great use of the privileged social background and connections of Costa and her family. They walked the hallways of the House of Representatives, the Congress, and the president’s official residence; they interviewed politicians from both sides of the spectrum and closely followed Dilma Rousseff and her predecessor, Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, before, during, and after the impeachment. As a result, The Edge of Democracy is a firsthand account of someone who actively witnessed “behind the scenes” negotiations in Brasília and passionately examined the origins of the country’s political crisis by quilting together the pieces of evidence she had gathered.

However, Costa’s closeness to the leaders of the Workers’ Party led to criticism from both the Left and the Right, and the documentary received mixed reviews in Brazil. On one hand, people leaning Right on the political spectrum perceived The Edge of Democracy as biased—especially Bolsonaro’s supporters, who saw it as straightforward propaganda. On the other hand, members of the far Left used Costa’s family’s connections with the infamous construction company Andrade-Gutierrez to discredit the value of her argument—despite the fact that Costa is aware of her privileges and openly critical of the company’s involvement in politics and corruption scandals. Domestically, the documentary’s positive reviews came mainly from Workers’ Party militants and people in the center-Left and liberal Left. They praised Costa...