Netflix’s ‘Apocalypse in the Tropics’: A Democracy on the Edge, A Warning for the World

A president who rejects election results, alleges fraud, and calls the media “fake news” incites an enraged mob to storm the nation’s congress. This scenario, while familiar to American audiences, is the subject of Oscar-nominated Brazilian filmmaker Petra Costa’s new documentary, focusing on the turbulent rise and fall of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro. The film, Apocalypse in the Tropics, is a thematic continuation of Costa’s previous work, The Edge of Democracy, which dissected the political crises that led to Bolsonaro’s ascent. This new documentary argues that to understand Brazil’s recent history, one must look beyond its politicians and examine a deeper, more powerful force: the meteoric rise of evangelical Christianity as a political power. The film presents a nation where the line between democracy and theocracy has become dangerously blurred, framing Brazil’s story not as an isolated event, but as a chilling case study and an urgent warning for other democracies facing the global tide of right-wing populism. It uses the Brazilian experience to perform an autopsy on a specific model of democratic decay, one that begins with a political crisis that erodes public trust in secular institutions, creating a spiritual vacuum eagerly filled by absolutist religious ideologies that threaten the state itself.

The Power Behind the Throne: The Kingmaker and His Vessel

In a deliberate narrative choice, the documentary decenters Jair Bolsonaro. While his presence is constant, the film portrays him less as a mastermind and more as a vessel: a charismatic but ideologically hollow puppet fed soundbites by his inner circle. The true protagonist of this political drama is Silas Malafaia, a wealthy, influential, and self-promoting Pentecostal televangelist. The film, which secured extraordinary, multi-year access to Malafaia, presents him as the “Kingmaker,” a title he embraces. He is the puppet master, the ideological engine behind the throne. Using his vast media platform as a pulpit, Malafaia frames Brazilian politics as an existential culture war, a holy battle between traditional family values and a “satanic” leftist agenda. The film reveals his adherence to dominion theology, a belief that Christians are mandated to take control of society’s “seven mountains of influence”—family, religion, education, media, arts, business, and government. This dynamic exposes a potent political formula: the kingmaker provides the theological justification and grassroots network, while the political leader provides the populist appeal. The vessel’s ideological hollowness is not a flaw but a feature, allowing him to become a blank canvas onto which the movement’s agenda is projected, with his followers’ devotion directed not at policy but at his perceived divine anointment.

Apocalypse in the Tropics

The Tectonic Shift: Charting the Rise of a Political Faith

The documentary grounds its argument in a “tectonic shift” in Brazilian society: the explosive growth of the evangelical population from just 5 percent to over 30 percent in four decades, one of the most rapid religious transformations in modern history. The film traces the origins of this movement to the Cold War, positing that the brand of right-wing evangelicalism now dominating Brazilian politics is largely a U.S. import. In the 1960s and 70s, as a progressive, socially-engaged “liberation theology” gained traction within Latin America’s Catholic Church, U.S. political interests viewed it as a communist threat. In response, Washington channeled support to American evangelical missionaries like Billy Graham, whose massive anti-communist rallies were promoted and broadcast by Brazil’s military dictatorship. This intervention helped cultivate a form of Christianity inherently aligned with conservative, authoritarian politics. Over the subsequent decades, this movement grew by providing social services and spiritual guidance in communities neglected by the state. Eventually, this vast and organized population was mobilized into a decisive political bloc, making it nearly impossible for a right-wing candidate to win a national election without first courting the evangelical vote. The film reframes the crisis not as a sudden spiritual awakening, but as the successful outcome of a geopolitical strategy where an ideology planted for foreign policy reasons matured into a force capable of capturing the state.

Unveiling the Apocalypse

The film’s title, Apocalypse in the Tropics, operates on two levels. It refers not only to the cataclysmic vision of the world’s end from the Book of Revelation but also to the original Greek meaning of the word apocalypse: an “unveiling.” The documentary seeks to pull back the veil on Brazil’s crisis, revealing the fragility of its democratic structures. Costa employs a poetic, essay-like narrative style, using her own voiceover to reflect on her secular upbringing as she grapples with the religious fervor she documents. The film is structured in chapters with biblical connotations, its visual tapestry weaving together majestic drone shots of rallies, raw handheld footage from inside the political machine, and archival clips. A powerful recurring motif is the use of close-ups of apocalyptic paintings by artists like Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel, visually connecting the contemporary political drama to a timeless theological framework of judgment and holy war. This aesthetic choice underscores a central argument: the theology of the end times has been repurposed as a political tool. The film exposes an eschatology, vocalized by figures like Malafaia, in which worldly chaos is not a tragedy to be avoided but a potential catalyst for the second coming of Christ, creating a political movement not invested in solving crises, but in perhaps accelerating them.

From Viral Plague to Political Insurrection

The documentary’s chapter on the COVID-19 pandemic serves as a stark case study of this worldview in action. It shows the Bolsonaro government responding to the public health catastrophe not with science, but with prayer. Brazil’s staggering death toll, one of the highest in the world, is described as rising with “Old Testament fury” as the president shrugged that “we’re all going to die one day.” The film suggests this immense loss only made a desperate populace more eager to believe in a messianic leader. The narrative climaxes with the storming of Brazil’s federal government buildings. Jarring, close-up footage captures a violent mob desecrating the National Congress, the Supreme Court, and the presidential palace in an attack with deliberate parallels to the January 6th insurrection in the United States. The riots are presented as the direct consequence of Bolsonaro’s refusal to concede defeat and Malafaia’s calls for military intervention. In this framework, destroying democratic institutions is not nihilism but an act of purification. When a political movement believes earthly destruction is a prerequisite for a divine future, violence becomes a legitimate tool and compromise, an impossibility.

The Unfinished Chapter

While Apocalypse in the Tropics chronicles the end of Bolsonaro’s presidency, it offers a sobering conclusion: his electoral defeat is not the end of the story. The powerful, organized, and deeply entrenched evangelical political movement that propelled him to power remains a permanent fixture of the Brazilian landscape. The documentary’s final warning is that the forces that blurred the lines between church and state have not receded, and that Brazil’s young, secular democracy continues to hang precariously in the balance. The film, a production from companies including Busca Vida Filmes and Plan B Entertainment, premieres globally on Netflix today.