Educational Media Reviews Online

Lula’s Brazil is a broad description of the dynamics among the current leftist government (since 2002) led by Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the people who elected him, and the powerful forces of the landed gentry/governing elite that retains control over the congress. It’s main theme/subtitle is “the management of hope,” and the film effectively illustrates the considerable amount of understanding that many voters bring to their view of Lula, who learned to read at the age of ten, and why they re-elected him in 2006. Much of the testimony is biographical, gathered from people who have known Lula throughout his career, especially in the northeast, and some is mined for irony: “Look, I’m the president’s cousin and I’m in line for ‘Zero Hunger’!” While the film may be seen as rationalizing Lula’s cautious economic policy, which focuses on economic growth and the middle classes that are believed to sustain it, it presents a series of historical and newly shot scenes - demonstrations, speeches, interviews, panels, and conversational groups - that leave the viewer with a strong impression of the true difficulties that have hindered his following through with his promises to redistribute wealth/land since he was first carried aloft as the leader of the metalworkers union by strikers in 1980.

Much of the material testifies to Lula’s willingness to engage, and leave the door open. For example, he pronounces in a speech, “If you have a demand, ask me, but do it lucidly. . .” In another scene, a group of his comrades from the metalworkers union -- Japanese, white, and black -- argue about his lack of success in eradicating hunger, while in a rural area, a squatter from the ‘Landless Workers Movement” prefers growing his own food to receiving aid from ‘Zero hunger’. Lula’s government turns a benign eye on such illegal activity, as has always been the case in the urban favelas, where the film maker sends a camera zooming down an aisle after some police looking for drug suspects. They end up interviewing a man who proclaims himself a ‘former landless worker who has become a roofless worker.’ One of the wealthy landowners says Lula “lights one candle for the devil and one for god -- quite skillfully.” A painful scene of Lula’s contribution to a WEF panel on ‘Funding the War on Poverty’ confirms the humiliations he courts as a world leader who advises rich countries to share more. In the end, a sympathizer admits that he’d like things to move faster, but we “can’t put him against a wall. We all must share responsibility for progress. More grass roots pressure would help him. We must move beyond hunger to the scandal of inequality.” The film ends with a charming long shot following a small boy who patiently pulls along a kite until it launches. The editing and music are particularly well done with the singer/composer Caetano Veloso contributing some of the songs. Recommended, especially for collections focused on current events or politics.