Reviewed December 7, 2005
In 1993 sixty-eight street children were fired on by police in front of a church in Brazil. Of the sixty children who survived this event, the Candelaria Massacre, 39 have died or been killed since. One of the survivors, a boy named Sandro do Nascimiento, is the subject of the documentary "Bus 174."
On June 12, 2000, Sandro hijacked Bus 174 on the streets of Rio de Janeiro and held passengers hostage. For four hours, he kept police at bay while 35 million Brazilian television viewers watched. At the end, one of the hostages was shot by a policeman, Sandro was captured and died from suffocation on the way to the police station.
A raw event like this shocks and horrifies and inevitably raises the questions of how and why such a thing could happen. "Bus 174" answers those questions clearly and convincingly. Interleaved with video footage shot during the hijacking we find out about Sandro's life and begin to understand how he has ended up on that bus in that desperately hopeless situation.
There are interviews with hostages and policemen so we understand the event itself in more depth. The voices of street children, friends and relatives of Sandro, a social worker and a sociologist are also woven into this tragic biography. Many of these voice-overs are directly relevant to what Sandro was doing or saying on the bus. This documentary has a simple but admirably precise and careful structure. It never strays far from the event itself and enriches our understanding of what is happening on the bus so that each time we return to the hijacking we do so with increased awareness.
The dvd extras include good background "making of" information from the director as well as additional illuminating interviews.
I recommend "Bus 174" highly. "City of God," a film about life in the Brazilian favelas, is another excellent film that gives good additional background on the difficulties faced by the poor in Brazil. And for those who really want to understand the lives of street children in Brazil, I also recommend "Pixote," the 1981 film made by Hector Babenco.
(Review by Brian Horne - all rights reserved.)
