Oliver Stone announces a documentary on Lula which directly addresses the legal setbacks and the return to power of the President of Brazil

After Castro and Chavez, the American filmmaker has just completed filming this documentary film dedicated to the Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. No theatrical release date has yet been announced.

Oliver Stone has completed filming a documentary on Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, his incarceration between 2018 and 2019 and his return to power, the filmmaker said in an interview with AFP.

“The documentary discusses the legal proceedings (Editor’s note: who targeted the former Brazilian president from 2011 for acts of corruption and money laundering, among others), what happened when they put this president of a prosperous country in prison for corruption, which is not really unusual in these countries,” declared Stone, visiting Paris on Tuesday March 12 to talk about Nuclear Nowa documentary on nuclear defense.

No release date has been announced at the moment, with the film due to be presented at a festival, said the American director, a regular at major cinema events such as the Cannes festival.

Several films about South American leaders

Over the course of five decades, Oliver Stone has filmed several works of fiction and documentaries related to Latin America, starting with El Salvador (1986), with James Woods. Some of his works are controversial, such as Commandera documentary released in 2003 on Fidel Castro, to which he devoted two others, in 2004 and 2012. In 2014, Stone also directed My Friend Hugoabout former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, produced by the official Venezuelan broadcaster Telesur, which defends the Chavista regime.

Filming the documentary on Lula took months, during which Oliver Stone traveled with the veteran Brazilian politician. Asked about the similarities between Lula, Chavez and Castro, he sees in them “humanists”. “They are all original and do their best to serve their country,” he believes.

Talks with Putin

“I think prosecution is used all over the world for political reasons, as a political tool. But the whole world is corrupt. Russia runs on corruption, like Turkey or the United States,” added Oliver Stone, who also authored a series of interviews with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.“I am a free thinker“, declares the filmmaker, who does not plan to vote for either Trump or Biden in the US elections in November. With interviews like those with Putin, Stone has built up a reputation as an outsider in Hollywood. This has already earned him to be called a conspiracy theorist, which he says he doesn’t care about.

Winner of three Oscars, the director of Platoon And JFK admits that a return to feature films seems difficult.