The threats posed by religion to liberal democracy are laid out with chilling poeticism by Apocalypse in the Tropics, Petra Costa’s unnerving recent-history documentary about the rise of Evangelicals in Brazilian politics.
A companion piece to 2019’s Oscar-nominated The Edge of Democracy, the director’s latest (July 11 in theaters; July 14 on Netflix) is a portrait of a country on the brink of theocracy thanks to the amplification and weaponization of faith in the public sphere, all of it rooted in end-of-the-world warfare terms that will sound eerily familiar to those who’ve lived in America for the past decade. Rife with Trump-era parallels that only augment its global relevance, it’s a warning about those who seek power by claiming holy authority.
Mournfully narrated by Costa, who confesses that her secular upbringing left her initially blind to Evangelical Christianity’s growing popularity (and what it foretold about her homeland’s future), Apocalypse in the Tropics is the story of the ascent of Jair Bolsonaro, whom Costa, upon first meeting him in 2016, viewed as a right-wing striver.
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