The Day That Lasted 21 Years

In 1969 the US ambassador to Brazil was exchanged for 15 political prisoners. Years later, documentarian Camilo Tavares, the son of one of those prisoners – born in exile – delves into the reasons of why Brazil suspended democracy for 21 years.

Sifting through a wealth of interviews, declassified documents, and audiotapes from The White House, U.S. Department of State and the CIA, Tavares delivers a damning, unassailable assessment of JFK’s bullying policy of communist containment which overthrew the popularly elected Brazilian President Joao Goulart, and with him Brazil’s democratic institutions. The result was 21 years of brutal dictatorship. In the name of ‘Freedom’ and ‘Democracy’, the Brazilian military regime controlled, tortured and imprisoned thousands of citizens from 1964 to 1985 – one of the longest dictatorships in Latin America.

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