For filmmaker Petra Costa, democracy in her native country of Brazil is personal. Two years after Petra was born, the country returned to democratic rule after more than twenty years of military dictatorship. As Petra grew up, so, too, did the country’s democracy. But, in more recent years, as she has meticulously documented in two densely layered and highly personal documentaries — first, in her Academy Award-nominated “The Edge of Democracy,” and now, with her riveting new Netflix documentary “Apocalypse in the Tropics” — Brazil has seen its democratic institutions undermined by a potent mix of right-wing politics and evangelical Christianity.
Petra joins Ken on the pod to discuss the close ties between the right-wing former military officer Jair Bolsonaro, who was elected Brazil’s president in 2018, and the highly influential evangelical pastor Silas Malafaia. Witnessing the dissolution of the line between church and state, Petra describes her own deep dive into the Bible to try to explain where the country’s apocalyptic turn may have come from — and where it may be headed. Told with a poetical and penetrating narration, this chilling tale of Brazil’s teetering democracy has clear resonances with events taking place in the U.S.
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