The Edge of Democracy (2019)

Rating: 9/10

A chronicle of the events and political atmosphere surrounding the 2014 impeachment of Brazil President Dilma Rousseff and the imprisonment of Ex-President Lula da Silva. This is an exploration of corruption disguised as democracy that is currently in place in the Brazilian government.

There’s a phrase said a few times throughout the documentary, it’s something similar to “this will be like a religious experience.” There are two types of religious experiences, the first is one that strengthens your beliefs in whatever you believe the Almighty to be. The other is one that shatters your faith, and this film documents Petra Costa as her own faith in democracy, something that used to give her such hope, has been proven over and over again by such an evil and corrupt government to be just as bad as the Communist government it replaced. There’s another quote used in the film, this one from Warren Buffet, “Class war is real, but it’s one being fought by my class, the rich class, and we’re winning.”

But what can anyone do about it? The rich can buy elections because the people in power only care about money, and not their people like they should. But the upper class is so powerful now that anyone who’s not them are essentially just ants. They have the luxury of ignoring us and the best we can do is make documentaries like these in the hopes of stirring public opinion. But at this point in time, where people think that they can just ignore all the facts they don’t like in place of the lies they choose to believe, I’m not sure if this is good enough anymore.

SCORING:

+9: a great documentary with a lot of problems presented but not a whole lot of answers