Blame it on Rio

From what we see in the movie, juvenile delinquents often share cells with convicted murderers and other dangerous felons.

The killers control these kids in jail. They set the tone. Some of these kids will even grow to admire the killers because the killers have money, they can pay off the guards, they can give you favors. It doesn't make sense to classify them as children and then throw them all in the same place. It's like the state couldn't care less. Filming in prison was definitely a shock to me. I had trouble sleeping that night. It was like 15 people in a room with three beds and no baths -- all on top of each other. Some of them had leprosy or other skin diseases. It was torture in a sense.

The media played a complicated role in the hijacking. They clearly contributed to the atmosphere of chaos, and yet without them, this movie would not exist.

The media had a huge influence on the outcome of the event because it had an influence on the behavior of the hijacker, Sandro, and also on the behavior of the police. On one hand, the police wouldn't take the sniper shots because the governor didn't want someone to be killed on live TV at that time of the day. So that actually delayed the process and put the life of the hostages at greater risk. In a second sense, Sandro seized that opportunity to convey a certain message. He would have hostages write on the window of the bus. He would portray himself as more violent than he actually was so that he would get more attention. So the media not only made the movie possible, they actually made the whole event possible.

Your movie retraces Sandro's life story in terms of the state institutions he passed through as a street kid. It seems to be as much about the juvenile justice system in Brazil (or lack thereof) as it is about Sandro specifically.

My vein was sociological rather than psychological. I truly think that Sandro represents a certain class or group of people that is left out of society, and who are badly mistreated by the state, and have no human rights, and these are the street kids and the juvenile delinquents. I could not make the movie too individual to Sandro because I think there are many kids who are exactly in the same place as he was. And that's the point of the film. By telling his story, the movie tries to build a social criticism about what is going on in Brazil today.

And what is that criticism?

It's the idea that in Brazil, and elsewhere too, people think that violence is created either by misery -- like if you have misery, you will have violent people -- or they think that violence is a product of repression. I think Sandro's life story shows that there is more going on, that the state is actively producing violent people by mistreating street kids. State institutions are shaped in such a way that whoever crosses them has a good chance of turning out to be a very violent individual. If you look at the 1992 Candelaria massacre, it was a massacre made by cops, and cops are representing the state.

I read that the police now use your movie to train their officers.

Everywhere except in Rio. In Rio, they pretend it never happened.

Have you had any contact with the Rio police since making the film?

A lot, because I'm working on a screenplay about the police. And I'm working with eight police officers informally. It's a fictional film. But I'm basing it on real stories. I can't make a documentary because it would be hell, so I'm interviewing them informally. Some of them have become friends. I still think there's a movie to be made about violence in Brazil, and that's from the perspective of the police because they are a big part of the problem. "City of God" addresses drug dealers; "Bus 174" addresses street kids. There is a third entity involved and that's the police, and nobody addresses them. I felt like I still have something to say about this before I move onto another subject. I learned too much about the police.

As violent as Rio can be, you chose to open the movie with a serene aerial shot of the city. Why did you choose to open that way, and why do you keep coming back to that shot?

There are two reasons. The first one -- which I don't have to explain to a Brazilian audience -- is that it's the route the bus took until it stopped in the place where it was hijacked. So I open the film with the route Bus 174 took. The reason I chose that shot is to tell you that even though the movie is the story of an individual, it's actually representative of the whole city. The best way I found to do this was to show these images of the city in a big, visual way.

It's also very beautiful.

Yes. It's beautiful because Rio is beautiful.

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