An unsatisfactory revisit.

Even for those who weren't expecting much, Visit, President It was disappointing as a documentary. It lacked the structure that would elevate the program above a retrospective report on well-known facts. The sound quality is uneven and the editing seems rudimentary.

Director Julia Duailibi, a reporter for Globonews who helped cover Lula's imprisonment, revisits some figures close to the president to gather memories. She manages the feat of speaking with photographer Ricardo Stuckert, normally averse to interviews, and the future First Lady. In both cases, she extracts far less than expected, although it is interesting to know that Janja and Lula communicated through daily letters, videos, and flashing lights between her apartment and his cell in Curitiba.

For me, the information that Gleisi Hoffman was considered for the presidential candidacy in 2018 and that there were Federal Police agents infiltrated in the Metalworkers' Union on the fateful night preceding Lula's surrender was new.

Furthermore, the report revisits the many episodes from the conviction to the release through interviews with Lula's lawyers, collaborators, and closest political allies. Most of what is heard is not new to those who have seen the excellent miniseries. The plot or the documentary 580 days, by Joaquim de Carvalho. Here it is worth considering that Globonews' audience has the capacity to greatly expand the reach of this information, which is undoubtedly an indirect merit.

It's also worth considering that a program of about an hour and a half entirely narrated from the PT's perspective is a historic event for Rede Globo. The initiative seems to be part of a recent movement to reposition the network after so many years of opposition to Lula. We'll see if it's not just a temporary and strategic move.

For a report titled Visit, PresidentIt is inconceivable that it doesn't even mention the visits of statesmen and great national and international figures like Leonardo Boff and Adolfo Pérez Esquivel. The Lula Livre Vigil, so fundamental to Lula's daily life in prison, occupies less than a minute of screen time.

The program opens with a glaring inaccuracy, stating that the imprisonment of a former president was unprecedented in Brazil. Minutes before the premiere on Wednesday, Globonews itself presented a commentary by Ariel Palacios about former Brazilian presidents who had been imprisoned after leaving office. Lula was the eighth.

Times:

• Early morning from Thursday (29) to Friday (30), at 3:30 am
• Friday, December 30th, at 7:30 AM
• Saturday, December 31st, at 20:30 PM
• Early morning from Saturday (31) to Sunday (1st), at 5:30 am
• Sunday, January 1st, at midnight.