''Bus 174'' ( pt, Ônibus 174) is a 2002

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

ian

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in te ...

. It is the directorial debut of director

José Padilha José Bastos Padilha Neto (; born 1 August 1967) is a Brazilian film director, producer and screenwriter. He is best known for directing the Brazilian critical and financial successes '' Elite Squad'' and '' Elite Squad: The Enemy Within'' a ...

and co-director Felipe Lacerda.

Overview

In 2000, Sandro do Nascimento, a young man from a poor background, held passengers on a bus

hostage A hostage is a person seized by an abductor in order to compel another party, one which places a high value on the liberty, well-being and safety of the person seized, such as a relative, employer, law enforcement or government to act, or refr ...

for four hours. The event was caught live on

television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...

. The movie examines the incident and what life is like in the slums and

favelas Favela () is an umbrella name for several types of working-class neighborhoods in Brazil. The term was first used in the Providência neighborhood in the center of Rio de Janeiro in the late 19th century, which was built by soldiers who had ...

of Rio de Janeiro and how the criminal justice system in

treats the lower classes. Within the film, Padilha interviews former and current street children, members of the Rio police force, the Rio BOPE police team, family members, and sociologists in order to gain insight into what led Nascimento to carry out the hijacking.

People involved

*Sandro *Julieta (aunt) *Dona Elza (adopted mother) *Janaina (hostage) *Willians (hostage) *Lucianna (hostage) *Luciana (hostage) *Daviana (hostage) *Geisa (hostage) *Soares (sociologist) *Yvonne (social worker)

Distribution

''Bus 174''s distribution was supported mainly by U.S. distributor Cinemax Reel Life (HBO), and ThinkFilm. With the rise of U.S. distribution companies in Brazil, some say that domestic success of the film hinged on their support or that of Gob Filmes, a film production company founded in 1990 by Globo Television Networks. After its release in 2002 at the São Paulo Film Festival, ''Bus 174'' was shown around the world, in many films festivals from Rio de Janeiro to Netherlands, and the Philippines. It received critical acclaim, and was presented with awards such as the 2004 Peabody Award and the Amnesty Award, in the Netherlands. The film has also been featured as an Official Selection at the multiple

film festival A film festival is an organized, extended presentation of films in one or more cinemas or screening venues, usually in a single city or region. Increasingly, film festivals show some films outdoors. Films may be of recent date and, depending upo ...

s including: *

Palm Springs Palm Springs (Cahuilla: ''Séc-he'') is a desert resort city in Riverside County, California, United States, within the Colorado Desert's Coachella Valley. The city covers approximately , making it the largest city in Riverside County by land ...

(2004) *

Vancouver Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...

(2003) * Sundance (2003) * Starz Denver (2003) * Sydney (2003) *

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

(2003)

Reception

''Bus 174'' was voted "one of the ten best films of the year" by ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

''. It has won over 23 prizes worldwide, including an Emmy Award for Outstanding Cultural & Artistic Programming in 2005 (after being shown on HBO/

Cinemax Cinemax is an American pay television, cable, and satellite television network owned by the Home Box Office, Inc. subsidiary of Warner Bros. Discovery. Developed as a companion "maxi-pay" service complementing the offerings shown on parent ...

with great success), and the Amnesty Award in the

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

and a Peabody Award. On the

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, the film holds an approval rating of 96%, based on 79 reviews, with an average rating of 8.2/10. The website's consensus reads, "''Bus 174'' uses real-life tragedy as the grist for a gripping -- and terribly thought-provoking -- look at societal tensions and police violence." On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

, the film has a weighted average score of 83 out of 100, based on 27 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".

References

External links