Maria August’s somewhat dry chronicle of Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment is a reminder that democracy can sometimes be undermined from within the system
In 2016, the impeachment trial of Brazil’s first female president, Dilma Rousseff, began. She was accused of
BREAKING budgetary laws, but in the midst of the ongoing Operation Car Wash corruption scandal, her supporters argued that the real motivation behind the proceeding was political, not legal. In this film, completed before Bolsonaro’s rise to power, director Maria August takes us back through the strangely staid series of rulings. Is a coup is still a coup when it follows “due process”?