Eloá the Hostage: Live on TV

Cris Ghattas's 2025 Brazilian documentary recounts a hostage case in Santo André in 2008. Eloá Pimentel, fifteen, was held in her own flat by the boyfriend she had left; it lasted a hundred hours, during which television channels broadcast live from outside the building. The documentary's real subject is less the crime than the conduct of the media: channels spoke to the attacker by telephone, interviewed him on air and inserted themselves into the middle of a police negotiation. The account uses the broadcasts of the time, interviews with the family and previously unpublished pages from a diary. The siege ended with Eloá's death, and the case is regarded in Brazil as a turning point in arguments about both journalistic ethics and violence against women. Who it's for: viewers who can take true crime and criticism of the press. Who it's not for: anyone who would rather not approach violence against women and the details of a teenager's death.