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Note: This review was originally published as part of our 2024 NYFF coverage. Apocalypse in the Tropics is now in theaters and on Netflix.

Five years, the closest presidential election in Brazilian history, and one insurrection after her last examination of Brazil’s tumultuous socio-political sphere, Petra Costa––the brilliant documentarian behind Elena and The Edge of Democracy––hones in on Jair Bolsonaro, the radical evangelical right that won him the presidency in 2018, and the theocracy they collectively fight to instate. With Costa’s nearly unfettered access to the main characters of modern Brazilian politics, the events of Apocalypse in the Tropics practically unfold in real time––a thrilling, profound documentary horror.

Costa’s third solo feature presents Brazil as a perfectly bottled representation of what’s happening across an ever-globalizing world. It captures the trending rise of a new political right defined not by their specific beliefs but an amorphous fanatic religiosity and the spiritual,...

In one of the most moving scenes towards the end of Petra Costa’s documentary film, Apocalypse in the Tropics, the upside-down head of the Lady Justice sculpture lies on the floor of the ransacked Supreme Court in Brasilia, along with a bust of some Brazilian politician from the past turned towards the walls, as if unable to bear the terror that had unfolded in front of their eyes. The hour and a few minutes preceding this scene ultimately seems like a slow and gradual build-up to such a devastating image, with the director’s main focus being on the connection between the rise of religious sentiments and the emergence of the far-right in Brazil. While such a connection has been drawn numerous times before in films and literature, Apocalypse in the Tropics presents a thoroughly Brazilian version of it, replete with clever visual cues, beautiful imagery, and a determined...

“Apocalypse in the Tropics” is a sequel to Brazilian documentarian Petra Costa’s “The Edge of Democracy,” which collected an Oscar nomination in 2020. Despite the plethora of opportunities and distractions that came Costa’s way, she felt compelled to return to Brazil and continue tracking the powerful forces challenging democracy in her country, in many ways parallel to the United States.

“It was a beautiful year in many ways,” she said on Zoom. “At the [Academy] nominee lunch, I met Brad Pitt, who would then become an executive producer of this film. And because of the recognition of ‘The Edge of Democracy,’ we were able to finance this film independently with an amazing group of equity investors and to document a time that would not have been possible were it not for this group of partners, because [President Jair] Bolsonaro had come to power and had finished with the National Film Agency in...

From TV soaps to the supreme court to the top job, Christian fundamentalists are on a power-grab in the country. We meet the director of Apocalypse in the Tropics, a new film charting their rise

Petra Costa was rewatching footage of what has become a historic speech made in 2021 by Jair Bolsonaro, the then Brazilian president, when suddenly she noticed something that went largely unnoticed at the time. Addressing thousands of supporters in São Paulo, the far-right leader lashed out at a supreme court justice, and said he would only leave the presidency “in prison or dead”. This statement is now cited as evidence against Bolsonaro, who is currently on trial, accused of attempting a coup to overturn his 2022 election defeat to current president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro denies these allegations.

But what caught Costa’s eye in the footage was Bolsonaro’s gaze. As he shouted into the microphone,...

Academy Award-nominated documentarian Petra Costa is returning to her native Brazil to capture a universal truth: Christian nationalism has become embedded within international politics. Costa’s “Apocalypse in the Tropics” poses the question: “When does a democracy end, and theocracy begin?,” as the logline states. “Weaving together past and present, the film holds a mirror up to the rest of the world.”

The doc examines the rises of current Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, former President Jair Bolsonaro, and the nation’s leading televangelist Silas Malafaia. In short, the film is billed as being a “cinematic investigation of the fault lines that emerge when religion fuels political ambition.”

“Apocalypse in the Tropics” is written, directed, and produced by Costa, with Alessandra Orofino co-writing and producing. The executive producers are Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner, Jenny Raskin, Jim and Susan Swartz, Geralyn White Dreyfous, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Jeffrey Lurie, Marie Therese Guirgis,...

Exclusive: When does a democracy end, and a theocracy begin? That’s the key question in Oscar-nominated filmmaker Petra Costa’s urgent new documentary Apocalypse in the Tropics, set to open in select theaters in the U.S. and UK on July 11, and in Brazil this Thursday, and premiering worldwide on Netflix on July 14.

Costa’s film doesn’t focus on, say, Iran or Afghanistan – where theocratic control of government has become a norm — but in a place where separation of church and state is enshrined in the constitution: her native Brazil. That idea, central to Brazilian democracy and American tradition as well, is coming under increasing threat from the rise of Christian nationalism. In Christian nationalist thinking – surging in Brazil and the U.S. – an avenging Jesus from out of the Book of Revelations suits up for battle with his opponents, eager to spill blood to achieve God’s will.

Apocalypse in the Tropics, a powerful Portuguese-language documentary feature about the rise and impact of Christian nationalism in Brazil, with eerie echoes of its rise and impact in America, will be eligible for recognition during the 2025-2026 awards season despite having screened at numerous major film festivals in 2024, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.

Indeed, the film, which was written, produced and directed by Oscar nominee Petra Costa (2019’s The Edge of Democracy), and which Netflix acquired in December 2024 after it played to strong receptions at the Venice, Telluride, New York and IDFA film festivals last fall, will receive an awards-qualifying theatrical run over the summer and will then drop on the streaming service on July 14.

Netflix also regards it as one of its top non-fiction award season priorities, along with 2025 Sundance acquisition The Perfect Neighbor.

THR’s August 2024 review of Apocalypse in the Tropics described the film as “riveting,” not...

Hot Docs, North America’s leading documentary festival, has unveiled the first slate of films to screen as part of its Special Presentations program. Subjects include Oscar-winning actor Marlee Matlin, Christo Grozev, an investigative journalist and co-founder of Bellingcat, Israeli comedian Noam Shuster Eliassi, and Silas Malafaia, Brazil’s most prominent televangelist, in the latest film from Petra Costa, Oscar-nominated for “The Edge of Democracy.”

Chase Joynt and Julietta Singh’s “The Nest,” described as a “deeply personal exploration of memory, identity and intergenerational storytelling,” makes its world premiere.

International premieres include “Deaf President Now!,” a chronicle of the landmark student protest that transformed accessibility rights in the U.S.; and “Life After,” in which filmmaker Reid Davenport investigates the troubling implications of assisted suicide laws for disabled people.

Making their Canadian premieres are “Antidote,” a real-life thriller following investigative journalist Christo Grozev, co-founder of Bellingcat, and political activist Vladimir Kara-Murza...

Brazilian documentarian Petra Costa takes us back into the tumult of her home country’s politics with Apocalypse in the Tropics, picking up key threads from her acclaimed previous film The Edge of Democracy. Five years have passed since that documentary offered a glimpse into Brazil’s shift towards a more conservative leadership. Now, Costa trains her perceptive lens on how matters of faith came to shape the nation’s turbulent affairs.

Specifically, she investigates the growth of evangelical Christianity over the past few decades and its connection to Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency. We learn that over just four decades, evangelicals ballooned from a small fraction to nearly a third of the population. Their ascendancy coincided with larger trends of economic hardship and ideological ferment. Meanwhile, Costa raises critical questions about how certain preachers have wielded biblical interpretations to accelerate instability and stifle social change.

A key profile is Silas Malafaia,...

For opponents of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro — which is to say, among other things, opponents of anti-Indigenous discrimination, deforestation, abortion bans, institutional homophobia and Covid denialism — his loss in the country’s 2022 general election was a relief, but hardly a new dawn. The presidency may once more be held by liberal veteran Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (popularly known as just Lula) of the center-left Workers’ Party, but the demographic shifts and political machinations that enabled the recent far-right takeover still cast a long shadow on a nation beset with economic inequality and social unrest. “Nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest,” says Petra Costa, pointedly borrowing from the Book of Luke, midway through her compellingly impassioned new documentary “Apocalypse in the Tropics,” which rakes with a heavy heart through the recent past while casting an anxious eye to the future.

The heart-on-sleeve expressions of shame, fear and tenuous,...

As a Brazilian, Petra Costa’s “Apocalypse in the Tropics” — a documentary that, in all but name, is her follow-up to the Oscar-nominated “The Edge of Democracy” – is a tough watch. Much like in that previous doc, this is a record of some of the most turbulent, heart wrenching and anxiety-inducing years in the country’s history, specifically the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro and his horrible administration during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The viral outbreak, however, is merely a chapter of this broad account of how Bolsonaro came to be, who supported him, and how he then abandoned them. The apocalypse in the title is actually a reference to the Biblical book of Revelation (titled “Apocalipse” in Brazilian Portuguese), which points to Costa’s chosen frame of reference for her new, first-person narrated film: Christianity. Or, to be more precise, how the former president and his close circle weaponized millions of...

Brazilian documentarian Petra Costa continues to chronicle the dire state of democracy in her homeland with the eye-opening exposé Apocalypse in the Tropics (Apocalipse nos Trópicos), delving into the troubling ties linking Christian evangelism and politics all the way up to the highest office.

As in her Oscar-nominated 2019 feature, The Edge of Democracy, Costa gets up close and personal with some very powerful people, capturing them during a wave of social and political unrest that has plagued Brazil over the past decade. This time, she focuses primarily on Silas Malafaia — a popular TV preacher who holds great sway over politicians on both the left and right, in a country where evangelists represent over 30% of the population.

With its portrayal of fundamentalist agitators, fake news purveyors, the very Trump-like Jair Bolsonaro, and, during an explosive finale, an attack on the country’s capital waged by hordes of insurrectionists, the similarities between...

Four years after being Oscar-nominated for “The Edge of Democracy,” director Petra Costa is back prodding at the current state of Brazilian politics with the documentary “Apocalypse in the Tropics,” which world premieres in the Out of Competition section at the Venice Film Festival.

The film, originally teased as a snapshot of former president Jair Bolsonaro’s infamously poor handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, morphed into a questioning of how democracies blur into theocracies and the role of the country’s growing evangelical movement in Brazil’s recent political turmoil. For perspective, in Brazil, the evangelical population was 5% in the 1980s. Now, it makes up for more than 30%.

“The film is a continuation of an investigation I began with ‘The Edge of Democracy,’” Costa tells Variety. Two of the film’s seminal scenes were captured during the shooting of her previous doc, including the opening scene showcasing a group of...

Film at Lincoln Center announced the full slate of Spotlight films for the 62nd New York Film Festival on Wednesday, with several top titles joining the Spotlight Gala screening of “Queer” in the lineup.

Coming to New York this fall will be Jacques Audiard’s Cannes Jury winner “Emilia Perez,” Sundance screenwriting winner “A Real Pain” from director and writer Jesse Eisenberg, and Pablo Larrain’s biopic “Maria” starring Angelina Jolie. All three films are expected to factor heavily in the awards race this year – this assuming “Maria” lands U.S. distribution after it plays the fall festivals.

Those flashy titles join other films such as “Nickel Boys,” “Blitz,” and “The Room Next Door” in the New York Film Festival lineup this year.

For those using this latest round of title designations to guess the Telluride Film Festival lineup, note that “Emilia Perez” is left with no designation as is “Maria”. “The Friend,...

Following the Main Slate announcement, the 62nd New York Film Festival has unveiled its Spotlight section. Taking place September 27-October 14, the festival has added North American premieres of Leos Carax’s It’s Not Me, Alex Ross Perry’s Pavements, and Andrei Ujică’s Beatles doc Twst / Things We Said Today. Additional highlights include Jean-Luc Godard’s final film Scenarios, Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Jackson’s Rumours, Pablo Larraín’s Maria, Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Perez, Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain, and, as previously announced, Luca Guadagnino’s Queer as the Spotlight Gala.

See the Spotlight lineup below and learn more here.

Spotlight Gala

Queer

Luca Guadagnino, 2024, U.S./Italy, 135m

Written in the early 1950s yet not published until 1985, William S. Burroughs’s Queer has come to be considered a canonical work in the career of the Beat Generation author and a cornerstone of transgressive gay literature.

The 2024 New York Film Festival (September 27-October 14) has added more to its already-buzzy lineup, with the latest selections in its Spotlight section announced today. The NYFF Spotlight gala this year, as previously named, will be the U.S. premiere of Luca Guadagnino’s Venice competition title “Queer.”

But new to the NYFF mix are Alex Ross Perry’s “anti-biodoc” (the festival’s words) “Pavements,” about the iconic indie rock band Pavement. That film also premieres in Venice in the Horizons section. A North American premiere of “Holy Motors” director Leos Carax’s self-reflexive short film collage “It’s Not Me,” which bowed in Cannes, also comes to NYFF this fall. Notably, one more “last film” by Jean-Luc Godard, who died in September 2022, “Scénarios” will play NYFF after screening in Cannes. The New Wave master completed the film the day before he died by assisted suicide. “Trailer of the Film That Will Never Exist: ‘Phony Wars,...