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Zagreb Film Festival
19 - 25 October 2008
Address
ZAGREB FILM FESTIVAL
SC - Savska 25
10000 Zagreb
Croatia
Telephone
385 1 48 29 477
Fax
385 1 45 93 691
e-mail
info@zagrebfilmfestival.com
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13.10.2008
Elite Squad Closing 6th ZFF |
The 6th ZFF feature film program will be closed with the most controversial and brutal feature film made in 2007. ‘Tropa de elite’ (Elite Squad) by the Brasilian director Jose Padilha will be featured outside of competition. Padilha won the Golden Bear of Berlin 2008 award for this great movie, as well as 13 other awards and the title of the most watched film in Brasil during 2007.
The incredible story of ‘Elite squad’ takes place in 1997. The Holy Father announced his visit to Rio de Janeiro. A thick web of corruption runs throughout the city, narcotic dealers govern the favelas, and the police is holding their candle. An elite unit for special operations BOPE must „clean up“ the city before the Pope arrives, although members of the elite team are themselves not sure if they are good or bad guys.
BOPA captain Nascimento (Wagner Moura) is facing a crisis. He is about to become a father, and he wants to find a safer workplace, but he needs to train his successor first. Two new recruits, Neto and Matias are childhood friends. Together they are strong, but individually they will find it hard to survive on the streets where only the elite survive.
Screenwriter Bráulio Mantovani was nominated for Oscar for his screenplay of Brasil's second huge hit, ‘City of God’ directed by Fernando Meirelles, and he wrote this script according to the book of the same title written by the Brasilian sociologist Luiz Eduard Soares and two insiders, members of BOPA. The brutal descriptions of reality and explicit scenes of violence are used by Padilha to point his finger at the Brasilian law enforcement, ‘Elite squad’ stirred ghosts in Brasil, especially the police who tried to suppress the movie through the court.
Many other controversies are connected to this film, icluding the fact that copies of the stolen version were sold on the streets of Rio and 3 million people watched it that way after purchasing copies for 5$. The quality of Padilha's realism, or maybe the quantity of crime in Rio is also proven by the fact that many viewers in the former Brasilian capitol forgot that they weren't watching a documentary, but a feature film. |
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