Oliver Stone Announces Documentary ‘Lula’ About Brazil’s President to Premiere at Cannes

Samantha Bergeson
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Oliver Stone is unveiling his long-awaited documentary “Lula” at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.

Stone filmed the documentary about thrice-elected Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva that encompasses the ruler’s incarceration between 2018 and 2019 and his return to power. Stone was in production on the feature in 2021 during which time Lula da Silva contracted COVID while filming in Cuba.

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“Lula” is the latest addition to the star-studded Cannes lineup, which also includes new films from Paul Schrader, Francis Ford Coppola, Yorgos Lanthimos, Andrea Arnold, David Cronenberg, Ali Abbasi, Sean Baker, Jia Zhangke, and Paolo Sorrentino.

Stone teased “Lula” to Jacobin earlier this year, saying that the film would be released “hopefully before the end of the year.”

“As you know, I had him in the other films with Hugo Chávez. And of course, he’s gotten a very dramatic story, with his going to jail after his second term. Now he’s back — he’s won a third term,” Stone said of Lula Da Silva. “It’s quite a story. He’s a wonderful man.”

Stone recently released documentary “Nuclear Now,” a project that he told Jacobin was inspired by the “confusing” discourse surrounding “An Inconvenient Truth” back in 2006.

“I’m not trying to run a debate society; I’m trying to run a fact-oriented science, where it says this is what scientists say. It’s not what protesters say,” Stone said of the feature. “I hope you understand there’s also an issue of time and clarity. I had a lot of ground to cover — I couldn’t cover everything. But I had to go, from the past, what is nuclear energy? Through the history of it, from the origin, through the protest movements of the ’70s, which is a part of it, then what happened in the 1980s and ’90s, then I got into the Al Gore debate about renewables — it’s a long way to go — and the future of nuclear energy. That took an hour and forty-four [minutes], and that’s pretty much at the edge of the attention span of most people. I wanted this film to play for ninth graders, eighth graders. I wanted it to not be too wonky.”

“Lula” joins other Cannes Special Screenings “Spectateurs” directed by Arnaud Desplechin, “Nasty” by Tudor Giurgiu, and “An Unfinished Film” directed by Lou Ye in the lineup.

Recently announced additions to the Un Certain Regard program include opening night selection “When the Light Breaks” directed by Rúnar Rúnarsson, “Niki” by Céline Sallette, “Flow” by Gints Zilbalodis, “Vivre, Mourir, Renaitre” by Gael Morel, and “Maria” directed by Jessica Palud.

Titles out of competition include “Le Comte de Monte-Cristo” directed by Alexandre De La Patelliere and Matthieu Delaporte. The latest additions to the in competition program are “La Plus Précieuse des Marchandises” directed by Michel Hazanavicius, “Trei Kilometri Pana La Capatul Lumii” by Emanuel Parvu, and Mohammad Rasoulof’s highly-anticipated festival return with “The Seed of the Sacred Fig.”

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