A cautionary tale for these times of democracy in crisis, the personal and political fuse in The Edge of Democracy to explore one of the most dramatic periods in Brazilian history. Combining unprecedented access to Presidents Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff with accounts of her own family's complex political and industrial past, filmmaker Petra Costa (Elena, 2012) witnesses their rise and fall and the tragically polarized nation that remains.... (Full plot summary below)
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A cautionary tale for these times of democracy in crisis, the personal and political fuse in The Edge of Democracy to explore one of the most dramatic periods in Brazilian history. Combining unprecedented access to Presidents Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff with accounts of her own family's complex political and industrial past, filmmaker Petra Costa (Elena, 2012) witnesses their rise and fall and the tragically polarized nation that remains.
Leave your thoughts about The Edge of Democracy.
| Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranWhat “Edge” is especially good at is detailing how Costa gradually began to see things differently, to see the corruption investigation as an attempt by the oligarchy to reassert itself, to take power via a kind of legislative/judicial coup because it could not do so by the ballot. |
| RogerEbert.comMatt FagerholmLike her brilliant 2012 debut feature, “Elena,” which recounted the “inconsolable memory” of Costa’s older sister prior to her suicide, the director’s latest work, The Edge of Democracy, is haunted by loss. |
| The New York TimesA.O. ScottThough she is a scrupulous and dogged digger-up of hidden facts and a thoughtful interpreter of public events, Costa hasn’t produced a work of objective journalism or detached historical scholarship so much as a personal reckoning with her nation’s past and present. |
| VarietyGuy LodgeThe Edge of Democracy makes no claims to objectivity. This is documentary cinema in which facts tangle compellingly with feeling, while passages of solemn, stately mood-building split the difference. |
| IndieWireDavid EhrlichAt what point does a story about one failing democracy become a story about all failing democracies? Perhaps there’s no way of knowing until it’s already too late. |
| TheWrapSteve PondIn laying out the facts, Costa is, for the most part, posing a series of sad questions rather than supplying the answers; in truth, she may not know whether she’s documenting a stormy political era or chronicling the end of something. |
| The Hollywood ReporterJohn DeForeA mournful but clear-eyed look at one of the many governments on the planet currently either going to or simmering in Hell, Petra Costa's The Edge of Democracy is as much essay film as a primer on Brazil's recent history. |
| Screen InternationalAllan HunterCosta’s use of news footage, tapes of incriminating conversations that were made public and acts of self-serving betrayal gives The Edge Of Democracy the feel of an All The President’s Men-style political thriller. Further revelations about her own family and the allegiances of earlier generations turn that aspect of the story into something with the sweep of The Godfather. |
| The GuardianLeslie FelperinThroughout, Costa’s voiceover adds shape but doesn’t intrude excessively and lets the powerful compilation of original and archive footage, material shot on the ground in the middle of riots and by drones soaring hundreds of feet above Brasilia, tell the story. |
| Movie NationRoger MooreThe Edge of Democracy won’t convince that “It CAN happen here.” It’ll make you wonder how far down the hole we’ve already tumbled. |
