BRASILIA (AFP) - Audiences wept at the first screening of a movie charting the rise of Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from a childhood of poverty to a union leader on the verge of glittering political career.
"Lula, Son of Brazil" will be officially released in January 2010, just before he stands down, but an audience that included a political luminaries got a special preview at Brasilia's film festival this week.
The movie includes powerful images of poverty in the arid north-eastern region where Lula was born in 1947, and recounts the harsh conditions in which his family lived.
He was one of eight children and was raised by his illiterate mother after his abusive, alcoholic father abandoned the family.
Eventually, like some 35 million other Brazilians from the impoverished region, Lula moved to Sao Paulo, Brazil's economic center.
"Any Brazilian from the northeast who doesn't die before the age of five will live for a long time," Lula tells people.
The film, directed by Fabio Barreto, describes Lula's arrival at the metal factories in Sao Paulo's suburbs, where he became a union leader and headed large-scale workers strikes in the 1970s, during the country's dictatorship.
A virtually unknown actor, Rui Ricardo Dias, plays the Brazilian leader in the movie, which ends before the founding of the Workers Party and Lula's rise to power in 2003.
Opposition parties have criticized the timing of the film's release, fearing it will help Lula's favored successor, Dilma Rousseff, in the October 2010 election. Lula must stand down after two terms as president.
Speaking to reporters on the red carpet outside the screening, Education Minister Sergio Haddad said the criticism was unfounded.
"I hope that this is not seen as an electoral tactic. Lula is someone we are all proud of and that is how this must be seen," he said.
"Lula, Son of Brazil" emphasizes the tragic parts of the Brazilian leader's life, including the death of his wife during childbirth and of his mother while he was in prison during the dictatorship.
After the screening, many left with tears in their eyes, touched by the adversity depicted in the movie.
Lula, who help chose the soundtrack for the movie, did not attend the screening, but his wife Marisa Leticia was in the audience.
"This is not a film about a politician but rather about an ordinary man, his family and his extraordinary capacity for overcoming difficulties," the director Barreto said.
O Globo newspaper pronounced the film so moving that "it is sure to win an Oscar nomination next year."
Others said the focus on emotion and tragedy was excessive.
"I'm an admirer of Lula, but I found the film focused too much on cliches about his life, rather than on his union and political work," said Raquel Oliviera, a government official.