Executive Order: A Brazilian Sci- Fi Film That Tells The Truth Of The USA

Starting tomorrow and running through June 26, the Roxbury International Festival will hold its 23rd annual event, as always highlighting films by and about people of color. We were given the opportunity to get press passes or screening links to some of the movies, and while I would love to see Questlove’s documentary Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), which will be shown in a special Juneteenth screening, it is outside our coverage mission. Definitely inside it is the 2020 Brazilian dystopian science fiction film Executive Order (Medida Provisória in its original Portuguese).

Executive Order is set in Rio de Janeiro in the near  future, and tells the tale of the creation of a law that orders the compulsory return of all people with black skin back to Africa. The focus of the film is on the people affected by the new, clearly racist law, particularly a family trio. Antonio Goma, a lawyer, is played by British actor Alfred Enoch, perhaps best known as Dean Thomas in all the Harry Potter films. His wife Capitu is a doctor and is played by experienced Brazilian actress Taís Araújo (also the wife of writer/director Lázaro Ramos). They live with Antonio’s cousin Andre, played by Seu Jorge, who got his acting start in the acclaimed City of God.

All the actors, even the secondary and tertiary characters are really good, with Enoch as a standout. He has some deeply emotional moments that make you wonder what he has been through in real life to tap into that pain. The directing by Ramos is pretty solid with occasional dips into clumsiness, like when a high-ranking politician is portrayed as a glutton, including extreme close-ups of him eating. But then, Peter Jackson used the same technique with Denethor in Return of the King, so I guess it has the imprimatur of proper filmmaking now.

Overall the movie is slowly paced to build the tension between whites and “high-melanin” people in Brazil. Too slow at times, particularly early on. While it makes sense to show that such a draconian law would take time to build momentum, it doesn’t make for a very exciting first act. Things pick up, both in dramatic tension and action, in acts two and three.

Now let’s talk about the message. But before I do, a disclaimer. I’m white.

No, like really white. I can trace both my parents back to the Mayflower (granted, not an uncommon thing here in Massachusetts). I grew up in a small town in Western Maine named after  Colonial-era soldier Col. Joseph Frye, best known for killing many, many Native Americans. And I come from families of farmers and loggers. So when I say I am white and grew up redneck, I’m not kidding around. That means I am not the best person to comment on the social messages of Executive Order, because as much as I can see them and sympathize with them, I will never experience anything like what the movie puts its characters through.

Which is pretty much what the United States has put black people through, either at the worst moments in our history, or every single day still, depending on what racist transgression the movie is portraying at any given scene in its 1 hour and 43 minute run time.

Every terrible element of harassment and bigotry that happens to Antonio, Capitu, Andre and the other black characters happens for real every day to blacks here in the United States — not in sci-fi “what if” stories but real life. That is, right up until the Executive Order of the title, which forcibly repatriates black citizens to African countries, under the guise of “reparations” to fix the crime of bringing their ancestors to Brazil in the first place.

Aside from the forced repatriation aspect of the story in Executive Order, it actually mirrors the “voluntary” repatriation efforts of the American Colonization Society in establishing the colony of Liberia in Africa starting in 1817 for freed slaves. Even Abraham Lincoln, early in his political career, was a supporter of the repatriation of freed slaves. So, it is not much of a stretch to project the events of Executive Order into the U.S., when nearly half of federal elected members of Congress support a supremacist former president.

Without giving anything away, ultimately the message of Executive Order is mixed, with “stand and fight” and “hide and flee” presented both as viable options. And that may be the way such a story would play out in real life, with no easy single resolution.

I recommend you check out Executive Order, particularly if you get a chance to see it at RoxFest when it screens at 4:30 on the last day of the film festival, June 26. While it is slow to start, it is superbly acted and tells a very important cautionary tale. There is no U.S. rating I can find, but I would guess a mild R for extensive cursing. Frankly, it’s really a PG-13, with more than normally allowed f-bombs. 7 out of 10.

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