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The release of Fabio Barreto’s Lula, the Son of Brazil, on New Year’s Day 2010 sparked a debate in the country about whether the timing of the film’s release, a biopic about the incumbent president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, amounted to a highly biased piece of pro-Lula political propaganda.  

The film recorded Lula’s rise from an impoverished poorly-educated child, abused by a drunken father, to a union leader and ultimately leader of his country.  His opponents were quick to point out that the film glossed over the less savoury aspects of his character, such as the fact that at the age of 29 he abandoned his pregnant girlfriend, Miriam Cordeiro, and that he was threatened with impeachment following a congressional vote-buying scandal in 2005.

The makers of the film denied any bias.  Director Fabio Barreto, who as the result of a serious car accident he suffered on 19^th December 2009 after completing the film and responding to the accusations, was placed in an induced coma, said, ‘Everything you see is based on real events, with a splash of fiction.   It is not a documentary.’   Denise Paraná, who adapted the screenplay from her own book, said a number of scenes depicting Mr da Silva’s acts of heroism had also been cut from the film, while Paula Barreto, one of the film’s producers, claimed the intention was not to make a political film but to capitalise on da Silva’s unprecedented popularity (he enjoyed an approval rating of around 70% when the film was released).   Speaking to the New York Times she said, ‘I don’t think a movie has the power to affect an election.   Lula is Lula and this film is about his family.’   She also denied allegations that the film’s release had been timed to influence voting in the forthcoming presidential elections, saying that the film was released ‘because it was ready.’

Critics of the timing of the film’s release believed the making and release of the film had two purposes: the hope that some of his popularity would be passed on to his successor, Dilma Rousseff, who was struggling with public recognition in the run up to the election campaign, and the manufacturing of the ‘myth of Lula’ to help da Silva return to power in 2014 (he was barred from running for re-election in 2010).   Mr da Silva, however, denied this: ‘The movie, in reality, is the story of my mother,’ he told a press conference in December 2009. ‘This is not a movie about Lula.’

The film’s financial backing was also subject to scrutiny by da Silva’s critics.   At close to $7 million the film was the most expensive Brazilian movie ever made, and received substantial investment from major construction companies and electrical utilities that relied on government concessions and which critics believed may be seeking to win lucrative contracts in the approach to the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio.

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