Bus 174

José Padilha's award-winning directorial debut deals with the same themes as his later feature films and : violence, class struggle and the workings of police, media and politics in Brazil. On June 12, 2000, high on cocaine and armed, 22-year-old Sandro do Nascimento boarded a city bus in a suburb of Rio de Janeiro. The bus driver managed to escape and the police surrounded the bus, so Sandro decided to take the 10 passengers hostage. With camera crews flocking to the scene, the hijacking quickly turned into a live media event watched by millions of viewers in Brazil and abroad. Using footage recorded by TV crews and bystanders as well as interviews with police, hostages and acquaintances of the hijacker, Padilha reconstructs the chaotic hijacking as it unfolded. But there's more to this than just the event itself, as is also an analysis of society in Rio, the city where Sandro belonged to the invisible class of street children, and where a poorly trained police force will stop at nothing to terminate vermin like him. A divided city in which violence both divides the classes and ties them together.