📽 Lights, camera, propaganda?

A documentary about Brazil’s former President Jair Bolsonaro — now serving a 27-year sentence for leading a coup attempt after the 2022 election — premiered Wednesday in Brasília. The film, “A Colisão dos Destinos” (“The Collision of Destinies”), was hardly a cinematic event. But the political machinery surrounding it was.

Directed by Doriel Francisco, the documentary traces Bolsonaro's childhood, military career and the stabbing he survived during the 2018 presidential campaign — a defining moment of his political rise. Shot between 2023 and 2024, before his coup trial, conviction and arrest, it has the rare distinction of featuring the man himself, narrating his own legend. 

Senior figures in Bolsonaro's Liberal Party (PL) have since confirmed what was already evident: the film will serve as a campaign tool for Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, the former president’s eldest son, who is running for president this year as a stand-in for his father. PL lawmaker Sóstenes Cavalcante said he plans to screen the documentary in public squares across Brazil.

But the documentary is merely the opening act. A larger, more elaborate production is also underway…

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