The boy, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, would become president of Brazil and one of the world’s most popular leaders, despite his fourth-grade education and impoverished childhood.

The movie, “Lula, the Son of Brazil,” which opened in Brazilian theaters on New Year’s Day, traces his inspiring biography from the hardscrabble childhood with a doting mother and a hard-drinking, abusive father, to his heroic rise as a union leader who was briefly imprisoned by the military dictatorship.

“What Lula has offered Brazilians is freedom from an inferiority complex,” said Fabio Barreto, the film’s director, an avowed supporter of the president who makes no apologies for glossing over any rough spots in his story. “This society has always been treated as inferior and lazy and less than what they are. No one has ever come here to tell us that our people are strong.”

The story stops before Mr. da Silva’s political career takes off. But that has not stopped politicians and other critics from questioning the intentions of the producers, who released the film during a presidential election year.

“Everything about this film is political,” said Amaury de Souza, a political analyst in Rio de Janeiro. “You are not just doing a movie about an ordinary Brazilian.”

Although Mr. da Silva is barred from running for re-election, he hopes to transfer his popularity to his chief of staff and his chosen successor, Dilma Rousseff. Beyond any lift for Ms. Rousseff, who has struggled with name recognition, political analysts see the film as a part of a reordering of the “myth of Lula” that could help him return to power in 2014.

For years, the onetime leader of a steelworkers’ union had been portrayed as a success story from the industrial working class, an automobile factory worker who was elected president on his fourth try. As president, his steady economic stewardship, populist appeal and charisma have made him a national icon.

But after a congressional vote-buying scandal damaged his Workers Party in 2005, threatening to draw impeachment charges against him, Mr. da Silva began distancing himself from the party and emphasizing his background as “the poor Brazilian that comes from a shack to become president of Brazil,” Mr. de Souza said.

The movie will tell that story to perhaps millions of viewers, and if the reaction at a theater here last Thursday night is any indication, they will find its message appealing.

“This shows the determination and will to live that many Brazilians have, especially in the poorer classes,” said Gulimar Ferreira, a public prosecutor, as he left the theater. “And it showed Lula’s perseverance. I didn’t know he had suffered so much.”

Mr. da Silva, too, was moved, weeping openly at a special screening last November. “I started to cry at the beginning when I saw the image of my mother,” he told reporters the next day.

And at a news conference last month, he denied the film would help Ms. Rousseff, whose character did not appear in the movie. “The movie, in reality, is the story of my mother,” he said. “This is not a movie about Lula.”

The producers say they did not set out to make a political film, but rather hoped to capitalize on the popularity of Mr. da Silva, who commands approval ratings hovering over 70 percent heading into his final year in office.

“I don’t think a movie has the power” to affect an election, said Paula Barreto, the film’s producer. “Lula is Lula and this film is about his family.”

The Rio-based Barretos, one of Brazil’s most prominent movie-making families, are open admirers of Mr. da Silva. The family’s patriarch, Luiz Carlos Barreto, 81, who produced the country’s most successful film ever, “Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands,” sought to make a film about the president after buying the rights in 2003 to a book by Denise Paraná, a former spokeswoman for Mr. da Silva.

The film was released now, Ms. Barreto said, “because it was ready.”

It has nevertheless drawn criticism for its omissions and apparent attempts to sanitize Mr. da Silva’s life story. The film fails to mention, for instance, that when he was 29 years old he abandoned his girlfriend, Miriam Cordeiro, when she was six months pregnant.

Ms. Barreto said that the filmmakers deleted Ms. Cordeiro’s story after her family threatened legal action. Ms. Cordeiro’s family declined to comment for this article.

“I don’t believe it,” said Manuela Almeida, 17, who was told about the omission after she watched the film here. “It seems to me they left it out of the movie on purpose because it would not be good for the image of the president.”

The movie also substitutes beer for Mr. da Silva’s favorite cachaça, the national cane liquor. Ms. Barreto said that was because the Brazilian beer company AmBev paid for product placement.

“Everything you see is based on real events, with a splash of fiction,” said Fabio Barreto, the director. “It is not a documentary.” (Mr. Barreto was interviewed before he had a serious car accident on Dec. 19. He remains in an induced coma.)

Ms. Paraná, the screenwriter, said several scenes of Mr. da Silva’s “heroism” were also left on the cutting-room floor.

The Barretos also point out they did not use government tax incentives normally available to companies that invest in Brazilian productions. But the financing raises other questions. Some of Brazil’s biggest companies invested in the film, which at nearly $7 million is the most expensive Brazilian movie ever made. They included the heavy construction firms Odebrecht and Camargo Correa, as well as electric utilities that rely on government concessions.

Some critics have asserted that the sponsors may be seeking favor with the government as it enters an intense period of infrastructure development leading up to the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio.

Whether the film plays a role in the election remains to be seen. Despite having a population of more than 190 million people, Brazil has only about 2,300 movie theaters; 93 percent of municipalities do not have movie theaters, the Barretos said.

Nevertheless, the Barretos are making an intense effort to get the movie seen by many, especially the poor. The filmmakers plan a second release in March in isolated towns that do not have theaters, using trucks and tents to show the movie, Ms. Barreto said.

They are in discussions with the Brazilian media giant Globo, which has television rights to the film, about producing a mini-series.

Here in Santo Antônio de Jesus, in Brazil’s less-affluent interior, the audience seems receptive. Ms. Almeida, who will be voting for the first time this year, said the movie gave her a better appreciation of the president.

“I am going to vote for Dilma this year because I want to see the country continue the way it has been going,” she said. “I don’t know much about her, I need to learn about her, but I have been told she has a similar political story to Lula, that she struggled a lot like him.”