Wagner Moura calls 'Civil War' tribute to war reporters

Wagner Moura said his character in Civil War, in theaters Friday, is a "war junkie."

Moura, who plays a freelance reporter in a near future American Civil War, said the film pays tribute to war correspondents.

"They experience something so strong in a war zone, and when they come back home, their lives just stop making sense," Moura told UPI in a phone interview. "They become addicted to [covering war]."

Moura, 47, studied journalism at the Federal University of Bahia in Salvador, Brazil, and worked as a journalist for the Jornal Correio newspaper there while he was starting out on stage. He said war correspondents are "a completely different game."

"I believe war journalists are more similar to soldiers than to regular journalists," Moura said. "With PTSD, they go through very similar things."

In Civil War, the nation is divided when Texas and California form the Western Forces to oppose a third term president (Nick Offerman).

Joel (Moura), photographer Lee (Kirsten Dunst), and colleagues Jessie (Cailee Spaeny) and Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson) drive from New York to the front line of Charlottesville, N.C. Joel hopes to corner the president for an interview in Washington.

"All these images that we are all used to seeing in Africa and the Middle East are happening in D.C.," Moura said.

Civil War was filmed entirely in Atlanta, including the Washington scenes. Moura said the crew filmed on the White House set that Tyler Perry uses at his studio for shows like The Oval.

"This feels like the real White House although I have never been there," Moura said.

Writer-director Alex Garland avoids specifying the politics that led to this civil war. Moura said the cast never asked Garland to explain the cause of his fictional civil war.

"To be fair, every time I see a film where there are American troops in Iraq or Vietnam or Afghanistan, none of these films explain anything, either," Moura said. "It is a film about the aftermath of a polarized situation."

Moura said he admired Garland's ability to depict a civil war without "an ideological agenda." Moura said he understands audiences might expect the film to address real-world divides between liberal and conservative politics.

"If it did that, we would probably be encouraging the division we are criticizing in the film," Moura said.

He has been a part of films and TV series that were much more explicit in their politics. In the Netflix series Narcos, Moura played drug kingpin Pablo Escobar.

"He changed Colombia forever," Moura said. "He himself wanted to be the president of Colombia."

Moura directed the film, Marighella, about Brazilian political activist Carlos Marighella, adding that he likes "to make political films that can be seen by many people."

Civil War, Moura said, allows viewers to draw their own conclusions.

"It is a film about the horrors of war," Moura said. "It is a film about the role of journalism."

Moura said he hopes Civil War shows the value of having reporters on the ground covering news.

"Journalism is a very important thing, especially nowadays with this polarized world," he said. "People get information from social media, and we really need journalists."