“Watching The Battle of Chile Helped Me to Have the Courage to Trust my Intuition...”: Petra Costa on Her Oscar-nominated Doc The Edge of Democracy

Access, access, access — be it physical, emotional, or preferably both — is the doc filmmaker’s equivalent of location. And Brazilian director Petra Costa manages to get it in spades. Currently streaming on Netflix, her Oscar-nominated epic The Edge of Democracy, the third film in a personal, award-winning trilogy that began with the 2009 short Undertow Eyes, followed by her debut feature Elena three years later, is easily Costa’s most ambitious to date. 

With fly-on-the-wall camerawork, and guided by her eloquent voiceover narration, Costa captures up close and in real time the democratic car wreck of recent corruption scandals in Brazil that led to the impeachment of one president (Dilma Rouseff), the jailing of another (Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva), and the election of a military dictatorship-glorifying strongman (Jair Bolsonaro). And, as if shooting in the presidential palace as the nation’s first female leader’s belongings are unceremoniously packed up, or filming as Lula hunkers down in an office awaiting potential arrest weren’t enough, Costa adds to the drama by deftly weaving in archival images encompassing the country’s fraught history, including her family’s own complicated role in it.

To read part two of my conversation with Costa visit Filmmaker magazine.