Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
When a doctor decides to carry out an AIDS prevention program inside Latin America’s largest prison: the Casa de Detenção de São Paulo - Carandiru, he meets the future victims of one of the darkest days in Brazilian History when the State of São Paulo’s Military Police, with the excuse for law enforcement, shot to death 111 people. Based on real facts and on the book written by Dráuzio Varella.
Carandiru is a sprawling, humanizing portrait of Brazil's infamous prison, directed by Hector Babenco with remarkable scope. The plot structure—episodic vignettes of individual inmates' lives building toward the massacre—is genuinely distinctive, giving dignity to men society discards. The novelty is high: few films so unflinchingly document a specific historical atrocity while maintaining intimate human drama at this scale. The ending, depicting the 1992 massacre with brutal restraint, is devastating and earns its emotional weight through the investment built in the preceding stories. Cinematography is competent and gritty but not particularly inventive. Acting is strong across the board from a largely non-professional and ensemble cast, though uneven in places.