News from a Personal War, Bus 174

From one of the codirectors of international phenomenon City of God, News from a Personal War succinctly lays out the battle between Rio’s police forces and the drug dealers who dominate the slums (favelas) that are dramatically perched on the hillsides overlooking the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods. João Moreira Salles and Kátia Lund go beyond the cops’ and the dealers’ points of view to get all sides of the story: tracing the roots of Rio’s cocaine trade, exploring prison conditions and elaborating the international politics that inform it all. The result is an unusually spellbinding hour that’s harder-hitting and more astonishing than any fiction film could be. (56 mins., video)

Before he directed the blockbuster Elite Squad movies and the current RoboCop remake, José Padilha created Bus 174, one of the most widely distributed and acclaimed Brazilian documentaries. The film gives a minutely detailed account of a Rio bus holdup by an armed young man. The triangulated negotiations between the hijacker, the hostages, and the police were broadcast live on Brazilian TV networks, and the story became an emblematic case of both urban crime and police incompetence and abuse. Padilha’s unfolding of the narrative has all the compelling tension of a remarkable true crime story, but he also tells a larger story of the hijacker’s childhood and how it reveals some of the deepest tensions behind law and order in Rio. (122 mins., 35mm)