‘Amazon of America’: film paints vision of a post-coup Brazil giving up rainforest

T he year is 2025 and far-right coup plotters have annihilated Brazil’s democracy, assassinating the president, closing the national congress and surrendering the Amazon rainforest and its untold riches to the United States. “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Amazon of America,” a thick-accented North American soldier tells a group of journalists being taken on a propaganda tour of an oil refinery in the newly annexed jungle realm. Nearby, a replica of the Statue of Liberty has been carved out of the wilderness to celebrate Washington’s tutelage over more than half of Brazil . The scenes are taken from Vitória Régia (Amazon Water Lily), a new short film that imagines what might have happened had Jair Bolsonaro’s plot to seize power after the 2022 election been successful. A Brazilian air force plane flying over a replica of the Statue of Liberty in the Amazon, in a scene from Vitória Régia. Photograph: Vetor Zero In real life, the coup conspiracy flopped after rightwing insurrectionists rampaged through Brasília in a bungling attempt to overturn the result. Bolsonaro and his accomplices were tried and jailed . The alternative reality presented to viewers in Vitória Régia offers a nightmarish snapshot of a future that Brazil may have escaped by the skin of its teeth – but that some fear could still lie ahead. …