Film: City of cops

WHEN JOSÉ PADILHA MADE BUS 174, a 2002 documentary exploring the plight of Rio de Janeiro's homeless kids through the story of a bus hijacking, many of his fellow Brazilians regarded him as a radical left-winger. Now, ironically, the director has found himself accused of fascism. Variety recently described his new film, a police drama called Elite Squad, as a "one-note celebration of violence-for-good that plays like a recruitment film for fascist thugs".

At the Berlin Film Festival in February, where the movie won the Golden Bear, the F-word was liberally thrown around. But would a jury headed by Costa-Gavras, a man with impeccable left-wing credentials, really have awarded Elite Squad the festival's top prize if this were true? Does such a description miss the point? Padilha certainly thinks so.

"In Bus 174 I explained how a street kid became very violent in a bus and I blame it on the way the state treats the kids," he says. "Now I've done the same thing with a cop, asking, 'Why is it that we produce violent cops? Why is it that the state – also, again, the state – breeds violent cops?' But now I'm a right-winger and a paradox," he laughs, "and therefore I couldn't possibly exist."

"This confusion is really p***ing us off," adds the film's star, Wagner Moura. "I believe that the solution for violence is social reform. It's education. We don't believe that violence is going to solve violence. Really, we don't believe it."

In Elite Squad – written by Bráulio Mantovani, who also provided the screenplay for the acclaimed City of God – Moura plays Captain Nascimento, a BOPE (special operations battalion) officer on the verge of fatherhood, who is cracking under the strain of fighting the armed drug traffickers who rule Rio's favelas, or slums, and the police corruption which adds fuel to the problem. Being sent in to clear a favela of traffickers so that Pope John Paul II can have a quiet night's sleep there (during a visit to the city in 1997) merely adds to his anxiety. He wants to hang up his black uniform and retire into family life. But first, he must find a replacement.

Researched to the hilt over nearly three years (everything in the film actually happened, claims Padilha), and co-written by a former BOPE officer, the intricately structured film oozes reality. BOPE, whose skull on a knife insignia tells you all you need to know about their methods, is shown as the product of a system that barely works. They operate apart from the police on the street who, abandoned by the government, are under-paid and under-equipped and function through corruption, including dealing arms to drug dealers.

Trained for war, we're told, BOPE is effectively the last line of defence against the traffickers and the police corruption that helps fuel the problem. They are a brutal, highly trained unit, who fight violence with violence. Nascimento, the film's putative hero (he is an "anti hero", insists Padilha), extracts information from teenage drug runners by putting plastic bags over their heads, or beating them, or threatening to kill them. At the end, he orders his prospective replacement to shoot a dealer dead in cold blood. "What you have is a process that breeds violence and corruption in the police and results in people dying," says Padilha.

Some commentators see the film as an endorsement of BOPE's methods; others, like Padilha, argue that Elite Squad is just showing what's there. Moura agrees: "To understand violence in Brazil you must understand the drug dealers, you must understand the people that live in the favelas, and you must understand the police and how the cops act. Elite Squad is almost a documentary." In fact, Padilha originally planned a documentary but quickly realised that no police would talk on camera. There was also a high risk he might be killed.

"Of course, I don't think the solution for the violence is killing the people in the favelas," continues Moura. "But that's how it is. It's even worse in reality. We wanted to show what's going on there for people to discuss it. I have never seen a film in Brazil that was debated and so discussed like this one, which I think is a first step for change. So for people to say this is a right-wing film, this is totally crazy."

Padilha does not spare anyone's sensibilities. The middle classes, represented by students who do charitable work in the favelas while at the same time buying drugs from the dealers, are shown to be a part of the problem. Since the dealers make half of their money from marijuana, the film-maker believes the drug should be legalised. "I don't actually know why it is illegal anywhere. I've looked into the facts of chemistry and I don't think marijuana is worse than alcohol."

Currently, says Padilha, poor people caught selling drugs because they often do not have other options, get thrown in jail – the inhumane conditions of which were revealed in Bus 174 – or killed, while rich kids who buy them get off with a warning. But ultimately, he claims, the real problem are the police. "If you make it a very grave crime for someone in the middle class to smoke marijuana, nothing's going to happen because the middle class is going to bribe the police. We have f***ed up police and we have to change them."

Rio's law enforcers got a taste of what Padilha was up to before the film's release, following the theft of an early cut of the movie. Amazingly, 11.5 million people saw the film before it hit cinemas. Speculation was rife about who had stolen the film and why. "Variety thought the cops had stolen the pirate copy – God knows why – and they were taking revenge by doing the piracy," says Padilha sceptically. "That would be nuts. It would be like shooting themselves in the head."

He thinks, on the contrary, that it was the public circulating the film as a kind of revenge against the police. Some entrepreneurial souls even set up small, ad hoc cinemas, with a TV and a handful of chairs, and sold tickets for $1.50. "They had pirate theatres!" exclaims Padilha with a hint of admiration.

He suggests that interest in the film was two-fold. "It has a documentary feeling, reality is like this, and people had not seen that before. Nobody had shown cops torturing and killing in a favela, because documentaries can't do that. City of God doesn't have cops, well a little bit, so it was hitherto unknown. Then the population hates the cops. Everybody hates the cops. So if you make a movie that is critical of them, then everybody spreads the word."

The police retaliated by trying to get a court to ban the movie or force the film-makers to remove scenes of torture and police murder. The judge refused on the grounds it was a fair reflection of "day-to-day reality". Then they went after Padilha himself, to get him to reveal the police who had helped him make the film. Rio's governor told him to ignore such requests. The director finally agreed to give a deposition but refused to reveal his sources.

Elite Squad went on to become the highest-grossing film in Brazil last year, attracting 2.5 million people in addition to the 11.5 that had already seen it, says Padilha. It has been selling well on DVD, too. "I guess because of the extras. And the DVD video clubs can't really rent the pirate copy, right? I mean they can because it's happened." He smiles. "When you try to make something forbidden, everybody likes it."

Meanwhile, the argument over whether Elite Squad is a fascist film is likely to rumble on, and could animate Edinburgh audiences when it's screened as part of the EIFF. The accusation still irritates Padilha. "It's very unfair, because you make a movie like Goodfellas, where you have a character who is a gangster, and you love him. You make The Godfather and everybody says, 'Let's hope Michael Corleone wins.' But does that mean that Americans are all gangsters now? There is a little – maybe a big – bias here, I think."

• Elite Squad screens at Cineworld, Edinburgh, on 25 and 27 June, as part of the Edinburgh International Film Festival, and in cinemas nationwide from 8 August.