8 Presidentes 1 Juramento: A História de um Tempo Presente

I am an admirer of Carla Camurati, but this documentary is reductionist in that it shows, in large part, the problems faced rather than the advances made. I expected a little more. Just for exalo-me, Sarney was in the presidency when Brazil went through the rebuilding of its democracy and important events took place during his government. One of the highlights was the approval of the Emendão, a constitutional amendment that brought back important rights to the population, such as the right to vote for illiterates. In the Collor government, there was the beginning of privatizations; the opening of the market to imports; the breaking of monopolies and the market reserve in the information technology area, which allowed Brazil to advance in the sector. Important laws also belong to the Collor government, such as the Child and Adolescent Statute, the Consumer Defense Code, the Single Legal Regime for civil servants and the Heinous Crimes Law. In the other governments there were also advances. Despite this, Carla portrayed the regrets we had.

The mission of summarizing Brazilian history from 1985 to 2021 obviously implies making choices, even if the film has almost two hours and a half length. Carla Camurati did this, not exploring some issues I would like to see more (such as 1989 election), but giving a disproportional attention for cinema policies, for instance, as it is a film by hers with her bias and idiosyncrasy as any author movie. Anyway, she tried to be somewhat neutral, showing bad media about all the eight presidents, difficulties faced by them, and some core moments of their policies, without showing clearly their opinions (and just appearing once in a footage of National Cinema Agency - Ancine during government FH Cardoso) and letting all ideological range of actors say what they wanted and thought in testimonies or demonstrations. It is definitely a rich clip of several remarkable moments and core characters of Brazilian recent history, not all of them often remembered. However, I seriously missed eventual events which wild give light to problems that are not discussed in her chronological approach. The most important of them, for sure, is the scandal of Lava Jato (Car Wash operation), that was proved to be motivated by self interests of their main agents (Sérgio Moro is at least shown as minister of Bolsonaro, but Deltan Dallagnol was never questioned in the film) and the disrespect for due process and rights (there was only Lula, who would eventually have his sentence properly cancelled, questioning arbitrary call by federal police at his home at 6 A. M.), such as induced testimonies in plea bargains, agreements between judge and prosecution, and partisan interest of investigators to bias election, which were all very well known the year before the documentary release. Other absences are perhaps more acceptable, as other core events happened the same year 2021, and the documentary is already quite long. To resume, the outcome is nice, and useful both for remembering what happened and for showing younger generations which have not lived most of that.