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.
In an effort to enhance his professional fortunes, Bolsonaro hitched his wagon to the Evangelical crusade that was raging throughout the country and was spearheaded by Silas Malafaia, a pastor who transformed his father-in-law’s church into a sensation—and made himself a national power player—by embracing televangelist-style capitalist enterprise (including hawking bibles on TV). Costa states that Bolsonaro’s lack of capabilities made him an ideal vessel for Malafaia’s fundamentalism, and the duo’s partnership peaked with Bolsonaro’s 2018 presidential election victory.
Costa depicts Bolsonaro’s win as the manifestation of Malafaia’s belief in Dominionism, which argues that Christians should control all of society. Having already bolstered his divine bona fides by surviving a stabbing assassination attempt (as well as by having the middle name Messias), Bolsonaro embraced his role as God’s chosen son, elevated to the highest office in the land in order to carry out His will—which involved the usual grab bag of right-wing objections to abortion, gay marriage, and drug legalization.
By the time he ran for re-election in 2022, the issue of gender-neutral bathrooms had also entered the debate, further aligning Brazil’s religiously driven conservative movement with the United States’ MAGA-ified Republican party, and casting Bolsonaro as a Brazilian Trump and Malafaia as his Steve Bannon-via-Stephen Miller puppet master.
Those similarities extend to Bolsonaro’s decision, after losing re-election, to refuse to concede defeat, thereby motivating his supporters, on Jan. 8, 2023, to storm the buildings of the Supreme Court of Brazil, the National Congress of Brazil, and the Planalto Presidential Palace in an effort to instigate a coup that would lead to Bolsonaro’s reinstatement.
Before it can get to that cataclysm, however, Apocalypse in the Tropics traces the rapid surge of Evangelicalism in Brazilian politics, beginning with an opening scene in which congressman and pastor Cabo Daviolo tells his faithful colleagues that “God makes the decisions” as others pray and bless the chamber’s desks. According to Daviolo, the fall of the current government has already been declared, and in this new moment, the conflict isn’t against men—it’s spiritual in nature.
Guided by such views, a campaigning Bolsonaro proclaims that everyone should own a firearm for self-defense and then, while wielding a rifle, half-jokingly suggests, “Let’s shoot all left-wingers here in Acre!” If this is a battle of New Testament proportions, anything is apparently on the table, including the arrest on corruption charges of former President Luis Ignacio “Lula” da Silva—a move that helps guarantee Bolsonaro’s win against his rival, who was leading in the polls at the time of his incarceration.
Following his release, Lula sits down with Costa to explain that his own principles won’t allow him to stoop to campaigning in churches. Yet to reverse his unfavorable poll numbers, he does an about-face that underscores his opinion that socialist programs which ignore religious values are destined to fail.
Costa captures this perilous period via footage of protests and rallies, interviews with Bolsonaro, Lula, and Malafaia, and conversations with everyday citizens like cleaning supervisor Ester Candeias, who admits that she likes many of Lula’s ideas (in the 2022 election) but supports Bolsonaro because she believes he’s a true man of God.
At the same time, the director’s narration adds a ruminative layer to Apocalypse in the Tropics, allowing it to touch upon topics such as the transformation of Evangelical apocalyptic doctrine from one that contends that the End Times will materialize due to mankind achieving peace, to one which alleges that Jesus’ return will be the result of humanity’s devolution into iniquity—a shift that allows Evangelicals to position themselves as heralds of a Second Coming that will alleviate the nation’s suffering.
Shot with sorrowful grace by João Atala and punctuated by archival verité and cinematic material that creates haunting links between the past and present (highlighted by a finale that underscores the literal and figurative wreckage wrought by pious madness), Apocalypse in the Tropics is a lucid lament for the previously stark divide separating church and state.
With economical incisiveness, Costa details the way in which that barrier has been eroded by religious leaders’ canny realization that they could consolidate electoral support by offering hope to the poor and downtrodden. That strategy was learned, in part, from Billy Graham and his anti-communist American missionaries, who championed sin as the fundamental problem of all societies and, thus, the church as its ultimate solution.
Today, that’s the reigning perspective of more than 30 percent of the Brazilian population (up from 5 percent merely 40 years ago), which when faced with Bolsonaro’s 2022 defeat saw simply conspiratorial evildoing on the part of godless heretics, and responded with violence.
While Costa spends brief time with an Evangelical pastor who objects to Malafaia, Apocalypse in the Tropics’ optimism—if it has any—has nothing to do with the possibility of a revolt within the religion movement. Rather, it’s the byproduct of the country’s democratic rejection of theocracy and punishment of those who sought to illegally install it.
The threat of Evangelical extremism may remain in Brazil, but at least in the short term, it won’t come from Bolsonaro, who was banned from running for president until 2030 (and is now being prosecuted for masterminding a criminal spy ring, which has led Donald Trump to threaten tariffs on the country)—a course of action that puts America’s own feeble response to Trump’s attempted January 6 insurrection to shame.
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