DOCES PODERES (Sweet Power, Lúcia Murat, Brazil 1996) is a chronicle of the first post-dictatorship elections that took place in Brazil in 1989 told from the perspective of the media. It is well known that TV Globo edited the final debate between the presidential candidates Collor de Mellos and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in such a way that it favored the former who went on to win the election. In 1990, Collor de Mellos disbanded cultural funding structures which effectively disabled feature film production. Twenty years later, history is repeating itself like a macabre nightmare. Since taking power in 2019, the current president has re-destroyed the film industry in Brazil. DOCES PODERES anticipates - in a latent way - the themes at the center of debate in Brazil today, such as racism and female emancipation. Combining politics, power and seduction, the plot borrows from the narrative structures of telenovelas and TV stars also starred in the film. (md/gj) (10.2.)
