Synopsis:
The full-length feature “Carandiru” is a ground-breaking portrayal of the largest penitentiary in Latin America, the Sao Paulo House of Detention.
The story is loosely adapted from the book...
The full-length feature “Carandiru” is a ground-breaking portrayal of the largest penitentiary in Latin America, the Sao Paulo House of Detention.
The story is loosely adapted from the book “Estacao Carandiru” (Carandiru Station) by Dr. Drauzio Varella, which sold more than 300,000 copies in the first 60 weeks and an average of sales of 7,000 copies each month thereafter.
The film recounts the experience of a doctor working at the House of Detention (where 7,800 men serve time in a location originally intended to house a maximum of 3,000). The doctor first came to the prison in the late 1980s, to implement an AIDS prevention project. Upon observing the prisoners’ deplorable state of health, he was moved to volunteer his services on a weekly basis. As his efforts began to bear results, he gradually earned the respect of the prison community. Respect led to the sharing of confidences. Visits with ailing prisoners became the context for sharing of lively and touching personal stories. In our film, encounters in the infirmary become a window onto the everyday life of the criminal underworld.
We come to know the rapist Gilson, tried and sentenced by the Law Behind Bars; Zico and Deusdete, inseparable half brothers who, in jail, become each other’s assassins; Highness and his shrewd balancing act between women and heists; Old Chico, a Zen master in the ways of the dungeon, at last on the brink of his long-awaited freedom; Warden Pires, who oversees the prison with the perspicacity of a tightrope walker; Ebony, the true leader of the inmate community and the arbiter of all its contentions; the religious conversion of the assasin, Dagger, the rise and fall of the surfer Ezequiel; Antonio Carlos, Claudiomiro and, coming between them like a knife, and depraved Dina; the existentialist philosopher No Way and his love affair with the divine lady Di. The narrative of the film is crafted like a puzzle with one story giving way to another for of surrealist, uniquely Brazilian collage of tragedy.
These narratives, set both inside and outside the prison, culminate in the infamous October 1992 Pavillion 9 massacre, in which 111 unarmed inmates were killed. The episode rendered in the words of our characters, who emerge at the end of the film as its survivors. “Carandiru” is not the story of the massacre, but about those who somehow lived to recount it.
One of the fundamental aims of this project is to open the gates of the largest prison in Latin America to the eyes of the general public, through the life stories of the men who make their home within its walls. -- © 2002 Sony Pictures Classics
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