On 13 January, The Edge of Democracy, a film directed and produced by two LSE alumni, was nominated Best Documentary at the 92nd Academy Awards. Director Petra Costa did her masters in Psychological & Behavioural Science at LSE in 2008, and Producer Joanna Natasegara graduated with a masters in Human Rights in 2005.
LSE congratulated the two Alumni in a tweet, posted on 14 January, with the hashtag #OscarNoms.
The Netflix documentary looks at recent political developments in Brazil, the director’s home country, focusing particularly on the impeachment process of former president Dilma Rousseff, and reflecting on the political polarization and growth of far-right movements in Brazil.
Costa situated herself as both a character and narrator in the film and interviews her own mother, a left-wing militant during the country’s dictatorship and supporter of the Brazilian Workers Party.
In an interview with CBS News, Costa said that, because her parents fought against Brazil’s military regime, she grew up believing that democracy was a given. As she started to realize this did not hold, she decided to “make a film about that neurosis,” Costa told CBS News.
The producer, Natasegara, agreed: “We all assumed we all knew what we meant by the idea of democracy and yet now everybody is questioning that concept.”
According to Costa, the documentary’s title The Edge of Democracy reveals a “process of erosion of the rule of law” and a conflict between different democratic institutions, as well as “constitutional hardballing,” a term used to describe the abuse of the constitution to destroy political opponents.
Costa went on: “As artists we have a responsibility in the face of fascism, in the rise of hate and intolerance, to try to heal and address what is happening. We can no longer shut our eyes to the state of emergency that we live in right now […] because we all need democracy to survive.”
In the same interview, producer Natasegara highlighted that all five films indicated in the Best Documentary category are either directed or co-directed by women. She complimented Costa, stating that the director has “taken the personal and political and put it into the screen,” and added that these five films allow viewers “to see these political worlds through the female gaze.”
Critically acclaimed abroad, the documentary divides the Brazilian public between praise for a well-constructed vision of the present political atmosphere in Brazil and accusations of insufficient criticism towards the Workers Party and its involvement in historic corruption scandals.
