Jose Padilha, Brazilian film maker HARDtalk

Welcome to HARDtalk from Rio, with me, Stephen Sackur. I have come to

one of the city's shanties. They have seen no massive investment

going into this footballing showpiece. It is pretty basic here.

There is a rising cost in living, basic public services, and a

pervasive sense of insecurity. Perhaps the biggest issue for the

tens of millions who live in Brazil's favelas and shanties is

security. Many of these neighbourhoods have been controlled

for years by criminal gangs. The government is trying to control this

with a police crackdown. They call it 'pacification', but police here

did not want to talk about it. How are things here? It is often brutal

and controversial. There are plenty of people here who say that the

police are little different from the criminals.

This community activist guided me through the narrow alleyways of this

favela. She has personal reasons to view the police with suspicion. Her

son died in custody. Police have a duty to make these

neighbourhoods safe. And, we know that drug dealers, criminal gangs,

they are working in these areas. Surely, the police had to come in

and get the criminals out? To Rio, and the government says that

if the police cannot control these areas and keep the peace, they are

going to send the army in. How do you feel about that?

Brazil is a growing economic power, many wealthy Brazilians find it

convenient to ignore what happens in the favelas. My guest today wants to

change that. Jose Padilha is one of the most successful filmmakers, and

his films portray the violent reality of neighbourhoods like this

one. Are Brazilians now ready to face some painful truths?

Jose Padilha, welcome to HARDtalk. You are known in Brazil and around

the world as a teller of stories from the favelas, the shanty towns.

As a kid, you were not raised in a favela. You were a middle-class kid,

what happened? First off, anyone who is raised in a favela is very

unlikely to end up in the film business. It is very hard for you.

That is the thing about this country, if you are born and raised

in a favela, you are going to have access... Or you are not going to

have access to a good educational system, you will not be in a

position where you can get a movie made, and money to finance it. In a

certain sense, all of Brazilian cinema is made from people who are

from middle upper classes. That is it. It is a sad fact. Is that still

true today? Yes, it is not 100%, there are always exceptions, but,

yes. It is true even today. I am not from the slums, as other filmmakers

are not. I do not think you have to be from the slum to make a movie

about the situation and what happens there. As you do not need to be an

indigenous person to be an anthropologist. What made you care

so much? What made you so interested in the lives of people with whom you

had no direct connection at all with Brazil? It is a funny thing. Rio has

been here for a while. It is not a city that segregates poverty. The

slums, they are huge, they are homes to 100,000 people and are in the

middle of the city. You can be in a fancy area of town and right next to

you, there is a slum. In Rio, you live in your daily life, if you are

upper-middle-class, but you also see poverty all the time. You see street

kids, people who live in slums, they come and work for you, in your

houses, schools, and so it is not... It does not have a segregation.

Perhaps it has mental segregation? Yes, one of the things I think that

happens is you create a psychological mechanism that allows

you to deal with that. How do you accept the fact that you are part of

a small minority, when you live in a gigantic city in which the majority

of people don't? It becomes an ethical problem for you. It also

becomes a pragmatic problem, because it has a lot of violence. I think

you learn not to see. With this documentary... That was your

breakthrough film? It touched a nerve in Brazil, because it told the

story of a young man, a very troubled young man, who had the most

terrible experiences as a child - his mother was killed, he had been

to the most terrible correctional facilities and was abused, and he

ends up hijacking a bus in Rio. You told his story. He ended up dead.

But you told his story. Yes, when I did the documentary I went to

interview a famous sociologist, who was at the time the head of the

police in Rio. I asked him a question about what he thought.

Exactly the same question you asked me, how do you cope with that? He

said that the street kids and the poor are invisible. But being

invisible is not a property of the kids themselves. They are a property

of us, but we learn not to see them. Was there, in your movies, you moved

on from the documentary Bus 174, to two hit movies in Brazil, Elite

Squad 1 and 2 about the violence and the special police operations. Were

you trying to tell Brazil to look closely at this problem that exists

in your midst? I think that we look at the numbers of violence in

Brazil. In Rio, let's look at this city in particular. One number. The

police in Rio has killed 1,300 people in one year. In a good year,

the police kills about 600 people. Those are people who they say

resisted arrest. When a policeman kills someone and they say they did

it because they resisted arrest, it goes into the database. We can track

that number. Rio has seven million inhabitants. About seven million. In

one year, the police killed 1,300 people resisting arrest. In America,

that has 300 million inhabitants, they kill about 200 who resisted

arrest. That tells you how crazy it is. I can tell you several numbers

about violence in Rio and how violent the city is. The question is

still, why? That is the question that drove me to do those films.

Those are my answers to the question. And what is the answer?

Usually, people say, especially people who have a Marxist

perspective, they say that violence is a result of social inequality.

The problem is, that is not true. I can go into countries that have a

lot of social inequality and far less violence than Rio. Yes, social

inequality is part of the problem. There is some other process that is

converting poor people into violent people at high rates. What is that

process? That is my movies. My opinion is the state itself produces

violence in two ways. One way, as I show in the film, is by mistreating

street kids and small-time criminals. If you get Sandro, the

kid on the bus and you get 3,000 Sandros, and you throw them in

terrible correctional facilities, you beat them up in the streets, the

police beat them up, they do not have the chance to recover, and they

get thrown into crowded jails when they are older. You are bound to

breed violent criminals. This is one thing that the state does. It fails

us by mismanaging those kids. Once you are a street kid. The state is

responsible for you. On the other hand, my films they talk about how

the state manages repression, and the police, and how the state does

that? They pay low wages to policeman. About $500 a month. They

are poorly trained. They have a low educational level. They are corrupt.

The police has its own rules. If a policeman kills someone, he is not

going to be trialled by the regular laws of the country, but by military

police laws and court. The state does two things, breeding violent

individuals, breeding criminals, and breeding violent policeman. No

wonder we kill each other. There is a real irony to the movies that you

have made and their impact. You have explained the rationale, and the

concern you have about how screwed up Rio is and the treatment of the

poor urban population. Yet, listen to this, one Brazilian news magazine

told audiences after they had seen your Elite Squad movies, 53% of them

felt that the captain, the antihero, the big police guy. Who tortures

people on screen. 53% of them thought he was a hero. 82% thought

that drug dealers tortured by the police got what they deserved. That

is a real problem. People think that in Rio, everyone is happy, people

are all cordial, that is not true. There is violence here. Those who

are beaten up by drug dealers, who are in bad situations and had to

deal with corrupt cops and so on, they make the huge mistake of

believing that making repression stronger, making the police meaner,

that will solve the problem. Actually, it will make the problem

worse. With respect, maybe you, as a filmmaker, made a mistake or a

misjudgement as well. Some of the critics watching your police squad

movies have a problem with the way they feel that you glamourise the

paramilitaries. I want to quote a couple of reviews. I wonder how much

passion... Variety in the US called Elite Squad a one-note celebration

of violence which resembled a recruitment film for fascist thugs.

Peter Bradshaw, one of Britain's leading film reviewers, talked about

your lip-smacking adoration of the macho lawmen in SS style uniform. At

the same time, we got the Golden Bear in Berlin, and it was given to

us by Costa-Gavras, a leading left-wing film-maker who saw the

film totally differently. But when you have serious reviews suggesting

that you fall into the trap of being seduced by the paramilitaries, does

that give you pause? No. When I did Onibus 174 I showed the back story

of Sandro. How he grew up, where his violence came from. I was accused by

the right-wing for being a radical Marxist, defending a murderer. An

apologist for poor criminals? Yes. Obviously I wasn't doing any of

that, I was just showing what the story was and passing no judgement.

This is what happened with Sandro. He killed his girl. But he had that

very bad past. I was a radical Marxist. When I did Elite Squad, the

protagonist of my movie, the narrator, I chose him to be the

narrator for this reason, was a radical, violent policeman that

exists in Rio de Janeiro. This character, it's true. Not only one,

hundreds of them. They go into the slums and torture people and think

they are right and they have a speech that they tell themselves.

"We are here to do this, we are entitled to

"We are here to do this, we are do." I narrated the film from his

perspective. Scorsese had the same problem with Taxi Driver, I can show

you the reviews, the same thing. Let me go to the end of this. Then I

became "a radical fascist". me go to the end of this. Then I

same time I was a radical Marxist or a radical fascist. I am none of

those things. We will leave the ideologies aside for a moment and

ponder this. You clearly have a problem with the way the state,

authority and policing work in Rio. For sure. But here is one basic

fact. So far as I can tell, the homicide rate in Rio, since the

police moved in with their elite squads and pacification units, the

homicide rate, although still unacceptably high, has virtually

halved in the last eight years. Is that not important? Well, of course

it is. First of all, the homicide rate as measured by who? Did you

collect these numbers yourself? Of course not. They are official

figures. Yes, official figures by the government, that is doing the

programme. Those numbers are highly questionable to begin with. Having

said that, the occupy slum movement, done by the police, has brought

numbers down, not by that amount but by some amount, I have no doubt

about that. Not only murders but also crimes. But the numbers are

going back up. You cannot just occupy the slums with the police you

have, you have to do this now while you totally restructure the police.

That second part, I am not seeing. Also, I don't see schools being

built in the slums, I don't see better hospitals. What I see is a

small tip of the iceberg in a short-term programme, that lowered

the number of people killed in Rio de Janeiro to more than the number

of people killed in all of America. That's how good this is! A final

thought on this aspect of your artistic vision of Brazil. We've

just spoken to the Deputy Sports Minister about the World Cup. It's

one reason why Brazil is under such a microscope right now. He said, for

all the problems we have, the World Cup will show that Brazil is a

vibrant, thriving democracy and that we are the sort of developing

country that can put on a world class event. I think there's an

element in Brazil, especially probably in official Brazil, that

resents you as an artist spending so much of your time focusing on the

violence, on the favela. Maybe some would say on a cliched view of

Brazil's problems. It is a cliche if you don't get shot in your head, and

you're sitting in an apartment looking at your television and you

believe it's a cliche. But it actually happens in day to day life.

I would rather make a movie about hunger and show to the world there

is hunger in Brazil. Annoy the people in Brasilia, annoy the guy

who thinks Brazil is the great thriving democracy, that he's part

of an amazing government that is doing great for Brazilians. I would

rather annoy these people, be like a famous Brazilian musician once said

- the fly in his soup. I would rather be that than be the happy guy

who shows Carnival, like nothing is going on and we are in fairyland. I

don't want to be that guy. Clearly, you seem to feel passionately about

so many aspects of Brazilian society. I wonder why you appear to

be quite tempted right now by a Hollywood career. You have just come

off directing a big budget Hollywood movie, RoboCop, and I dare say

you'll get many more offers. I don't appear to be tempted, I am tempted.

I am a film-maker and I love making movies. RoboCop, which I just

finished releasing... It's such a diversion from what you have made

before. In a certain sense, yes, but in others, no. I don't know if

you've seen the movie, it opens with an American army of robots invading

Tehran. It talks about the use of drones. You know, American...

Automated robot law enforcement? Well, it starts with foreign policy.

The argument is maybe these robots we use overseas to zap our enemies,

maybe we could use them inside our own society? The premise of the

movie is that Americans reject the use, internally, of drones. It's not

OK for a drone to kill an American but it is OK for a drone to kill a

Pakistani guy, even though Ameica is not at war with Pakistan, if the guy

has been charged as a terrorist. The same thing goes for Britain, who

also has drones. Are you telling me there is a link to law enforcement

in the favela? That in the end you're still examining this question

of morality? No, I am a free person. I think the world is here for me to

explore. I don't have to only talk about Brazil and slums. Like you, I

can go anywhere and talk about different things. I suppose what

interests me, I'm not making a judgement about it, what is

interesting to me is that so much of your career has been about you

pursuing passionate interests of your own. I wonder if you are at a

point in your career where you are quite interested in the big studios

in LA, calling you up and saying, Jose, here is a great pile of money

for you to make our project. Is that something you now... When you make a

studio film, and it's a gigantic movie, you don't have total control.

Is not true that in Hollywood you have to test your storylines on an

audience before you make the final cut? Absolutely. How do you feel

about that? The same way a lot of British film-makers, including the

guy who did Bloody Sunday. Film-makers are film-makers. This is

our job. If I get a good project and I like making good stories and

telling stories through the media of film, I do it. That doesn't mean I

can't come to Rio... The next thing I am doing is a series about drug

dealers, that has been shot in Colombia. It's not a studio movie. I

have a documentary I am shooting in Brazil. I have always done those

things at the same time. The fact that I can perhaps do movies in

Hollywood just opens the door to me. I mean, looking at RoboCop, it got

previewed by an audience. And did you change it based on audience

reaction? No. We got a great reaction. 82% score. I was there.

They preview it in front of you. The thing is, I like the issue of

drones. That's why I made RoboCop. Like Scorsese said, you can always

smuggle ideas into studio movies if you do it smartly. A studio movie

gives you something that a small independent movie doesn't give you -

the potential to reach a gigantic audience. And if you are able to

smuggle the ideas you want to discuss into the studio movie, you

can get away with putting those ideas to a broad audience. But, at

the same time, it comes at a risk. Once you have that kind of budget,

you will have to reveal... And by the way, I hate the directors who

get previewed, who get their movies changed, and then complain as if

they never read the contract to begin with. You have got to know

what you are doing, and you do know. Right? Jose Padilha, we're out of

time but thank you very much for being on HARDtalk. It's my pleasure.

It's shocking it'd happen in a public place.

I don't find it funny, but I don't find it offensive.