But it is the personal lens that gives the film its power. The sweeping scale and intimate access to political heavyweights-Costa spends time in cars and at home with Rousseff and Lula-are impressive. These events paved the way for the election of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro in 2018 and the film is essential viewing for anyone who wants to understand Brazil today. Through a combination of home movies, news archives and original footage taken both on the streets and deep in the halls of power, Costa examines the events that led to the 2017 imprisonment on corruption charges of Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s hugely popular 21st Century leftist president, and the 2016 impeachment of his chosen successor Dilma Rousseff. In her 2019 documentary The Edge of Democracy, Brazilian filmmaker Petra Costa traces her country’s political upheaval over the last decade, mixing her family’s story with national history. Shots in which the camera pans over the expanse of the Atlantic Ocean, a recurring image throughout the film, show the allure of the sea as a conduit to a more hopeful future, and the dangers it poses for those who dare to dream too much.- Suyin Haynes With Atlantics, French actor and director Diop became the first Black woman to direct a film featured in competition at Cannes Film Festival.
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When Soulemain and some of his fellow workers venture out to sea to seek out better fortunes in Europe and their bodies are never recovered, the focus turns to Ada, distraught in her grief and surrounded by a series of suspicious, paranormal events. Soulemain, one of the construction workers, is in an illicit relationship with Ada, who is betrothed to another, wealthier match. But the juxtaposition between the real social issues of gritty injustice, and the ethereal, ghostly love story that emerges as the film progresses, are interwoven in a mesmerizing, unpredictable way. You might not guess that Mati Diop’s 2019 film Atlantics is a supernatural story from its first scene, as construction workers in Dakar, Senegal, rally against their bosses to protest unpaid wages. Should it be in a language other than English? Should it be a production somewhere other than the U.S.? Do these labels risk projecting an Anglo-centric worldview? In the spirit of celebrating the increasingly globalized world of entertainment, fueled in large part by streaming platforms, TIME staffers across the world took an inclusive definition, here selecting their favorite titles that come to mind when thinking about the imperfect category of “International Films” on Netflix. TIME’s Culture team grappled too with the idea of what exactly makes an “international” film. And late last year, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association was criticized for placing Lee Isaac Chung’s Minari in the Foreign-Language Film category, despite the production being American and made up of mostly American actors-raising the question of who is and isn’t considered “foreign.” As Parasite director Bong Joon-ho teased in his Oscars acceptance speech, “once you overcome the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films.” In 2019, Lionheart, Nigeria’s first-ever Oscar submission for Best International Feature Film, was disqualified by the award’s organizers on the basis of films in the category requiring “a predominantly non-English dialogue track” ( Lionheart’s dialogue was mostly in English, which is still the official language of Nigeria due to its colonial past). What constitutes an international film at these British and U.S.-based awards shows has become a point of contention in recent years.