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A group of people gather around an older man, praying over him.

Apocalypse in the Tropics

  Petra Costa

  Brazil, United States, Denmark     110 minutes

Synopsis

Where does a democracy end and a theocracy begin? Oscar-nominated filmmaker Petra Costa (The Edge of Democracy) investigates the increasingly powerful grip that evangelicals hold over politics in Brazil, home to one of the largest and swiftest religious shifts in human history. As Costa tells us in her haunting and insightful voiceover, evangelicals have risen from some 5% to 30% of the Brazilian population in just 40 years.

With extraordinary access to the country’s top leaders, including President Lulu da Silva, former President Jair Bolsonaro, and Bolsonaro’s right-hand man, popular Pentecostal televangelist Silas Malafaia, Costa offers a lucid, poetic, and chilling look at the ways in which fear, poverty, and apocalyptic theology can be exploited to consolidate power. It’s a brilliant and gripping case study about the precarity of contemporary democracies with clear resonances in the U.S. today.

 Portuguese with subtitles

Screenings & Events

Screening

Mon, Oct 21 @ 5:30pm CDT

at Gene Siskel Film Center, screen 2

Accessibility options for this screening:
  • Assistive Listening Devices available
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Screening

Fri, Oct 25 @ 12:00pm CDT

at AMC NEWCITY 14, screen 13

Media

Film Credits

  •   Alessandra Orofino, Petra Costa
  •   Petra Costa, Alessandra Orofino, Nels Bangerter, David Barker, Tina Baz
  •   João Atala, Pedro Urano, Murilo Salazar
  •   Jenny Raskin, Jim Swartz, Susan Swartz, Geralyn White Dreyfous, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Jeffrey Lurie, Marie Therese Guirgis, Felipe Estefan, Rafael Georges Zein, Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Meadow Fund, Katy Drake Bettner, Kate Hurwitz, InMaat Foundation, Frida Polli, James Costa, Trevor Burgess
  •   Busca Vida Filmes

Sponsors

Documentary Program Partner

Logo: WTTW (2019)

Documentary Program Patron

Cynthia Stone Raskin