I watched an amazing Brazilian documentary called
Bus 174 last night. It depicts the hijacking of a Rio de Janeiro bus by Sandro do Nascimento, a former street kid. What began as a robbery turned into a hostage situation when a police car stopped the bus. Sandro, high on glue and enraged over a life spent in and out of dungeon-like prisons, beatings by the police, the murder of his mother (which he witnessed when he was a child) and the massacre of his friends, fellow street kids, at the hands of the police several years prior outside the Candelaria church angrily threatens to kill all of the hostages throughout the day.
The film makes use of an abundance of footage of the incident captured by numerous news camera crews who were allowed into the scene by a mostly incompetent police
force not trained in hostage situations. The footage of the hostage situation is intense. Sandro brandishes the gun wildly, shoves it into the faces of the women on the bus, sticks it in one of their mouths and screams at the cameramen and the police, "This is not an action movie!" and that he is going to kill all the hostages at 6:00PM. He orders one of the women to write on the bus windows with lipstick. She writes, "He is crazy. He is going to kill us all."
The film also conducts numerous interviews with his friends, his aunt and other people that knew him. It shows the prisons where he was held. One is so unbelievably awful, it is hard to believe it is real. The cell is underground, dark, decaying and filthy. In a cell smaller than my bedroom, they would shove 25 inmates. They would have to take turns standing and laying down on the ground because there was so little room. It describes his life, his addictions, his search for a mother figure after the murder of his mother.
The police involved at the scene are also interviewed. They were frustrated because they were not authorized to shoot Sandro, despite numerous opportunities for a clean shot. The government didn't want him shot on national television.
The film raises ethical questions about what should be done in a hostage situation. It raises philosophical questions about how we treat people not immersed in regular society: the homeless, criminals, the poor.
Bus 174 is the best made and most powerful documentary I have seen. The situation ends tragically, which seems inevitable as you watch the film. Everyone should see this film.
