Berlin: "Elite Squad" squad celebrates
The team from the Berlinale Golden Bear winner, "Elite Squad," celebrates after the awards.
A beaming Glen Basner (buried in the center), president of international distribution for The Weinstein Company, said: "We are so pleased for Jose Padilha and everyone involved in 'Tropa de Elite' and we are grateful to the Berlin Film Festival for embracing the film."
From left: Wagner Moura (Actor), Daniela Bromfman (wife, Pedro), Pedro Bromfman (composer) Michelle Krumm and Glen Basner (The Weinstein Company), Jose Padilha (director), Jozane Resende (Jose's wife), Maria Ribeiro (Actress).
Complete list of winners is here.
Michael Jones is the film festival editor at Variety.com. 
That lie, 15 years in Brazil
Posted by: 45 years in Brazil | 2/29/2008 10:55:18 AM
I would like to make a comment on all the Brazilians who have posted talking about how realistic Elite Squad is. Most people living in Favelas have jobs. The unemployment rate is higher than on the "asfalto", but hardly reaches 50%. So when a jackbooted comando goose-steps into a young black man's bedroom, finds a pair of expensive sneakers and decides to use that as a justification for asphyxiating him nearly to death and trying to rape him with a broom handle because "the only way someone like that could pay for those sneakers is by drug dealing", it plays onto the common stereotypes perpetuated by the Brazilian media in their war on poor people. Then you get these rich english speaking clowns on the internet going, "you gringos just don't understand. It's really like that in Brazil. I saw it on TV Globo."
Posted by: 15 years in Brazil | 2/28/2008 10:12:41 PM
(Text with language corrections, sorry for that) The Variety's comment on the presumed fascism of "Elite Squad" is an absurd. The review is not substantially justified. If the voiceover is sufficient to define the ideological position of the narrative, most of the noir movies, "The Clockwork Orange", among other masterpieces should be called "fascists" also. The violence of the film has a clear purpose: to make the audience experience the chaos in brazilian society. The situation in the favelas is really a war. If a policeman enters in these large communities without permission of theirs drugdealers, he's killed immediately by snipers. The film shows this situation, the mentality of the policemen and of the Elite Squad, and theirs consequences. If the reality is fascist we cannot show it? And the point of view of the fascists cannot be shown in films? The fascists are also complex human beings. And we have to remember a basic point of narrative art: the point of view doesn't define the ideological commitment of the narrative. Or Allan Poe should be forbidden. The winning of the Berlinale with Costa-Gravas, one of the greatest humanists of the film history, leading the jury ridicules the Variety's review. Thiago Cabrera (from Rio de Janeiro)
Posted by: Thiago Cabrera | 2/17/2008 5:07:27 AM