Movies Released October 8, 2003

Bus 174

This documentary captures what happened in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on June 12th, 2000 when Bus 174 was highjacked by an armed young man, Sandro do Nascimento, with a dozen passengers. Nascimento threatened to kill all of the passengers, but eventuallly agreed to surrender, as TV cameras were rolling and an entire nation was glued to their screens watching the event take place. Then, a police officer decided to fire at Nascimento anyway, accidentally killing one of the female passengers instead. What followed was a revolt among the city's population, enraged at police brutality. The film intertwines the story of the standoff with biographical information about Sandro do Nascimento, including his childhood as a survivor of the "Candelaria" child mass murders in the early 1990s, and the trauma of seeing his mother stabbed to death in front of him.

Jose Padilha