News from a Personal War

This 1999 Brazilian documentary, directed by Kátia Lund with João Moreira Salles, listens to the violence in Rio de Janeiro from three sides at once. Police officers, drug dealers and favela residents each speak separately. The method is comparison. Told from three mouths, the same event produces a picture of a conflict no one wins; a police chief criticises the workings of his own institution openly, and those passages became the most discussed part of the film. The narrative proposes no solution. Causes are shown at an economic and institutional level, and the documentary also served as groundwork for a fiction film made soon afterwards. Who it's for: those who follow Brazilian documentary and narratives about urban violence. Who it's not for: viewers for whom armed conflict and images of bodies would sit heavily.