[Editor's note: This interview took place at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.]
I have to gush a bit. José Padilha is one of my favorite filmmakers, and thus one of those I really looked forward to sitting down with. Thankfully, this one was in a fun, informal setting, and we went to get ice cream together. We talked for about 45 minutes, 25 of which is in this video. Listening to him you learn a lot. First of all you know right off the bat that this is a cool customer who both cares as much as anyone about his work, and enjoys the hell out of it. You hear the saying all the time I do it because I have to, but this guy really does. He makes films because he has no choice. The only peer out there is James Marsh, who somehow made what are possibly the two best films of consecutive years, the documentary Man on Wire and narrative Red Riding: 1980. Like Marsh, Padilha isn’t good at one particular thing. He’s mastered every style he’s attempted to tackle.
Invited to Sundance for jury duty in the World Documentary section and to present his latest film, Elite Squad 2, Padilha starting out in documentaries, with his classic Bus 174, he found another story he wanted to tell. After trying to document the inner workings of BOPE, the police force at the center of both Elite Squad films, he decided that there as a rule of filmmaking they left out in film school. A prerequisite of making a film is that the director much not die. This lesson brought him to scripted narrative, and the Elite Squad franchise. The first film released in 2008, won him the Berlin Film Festival's Golden Bear, the second instalment was released in Brazil to much acclaim and not surprisingly, accompanying controversy. His next narrative project will commence where Elite Squad 2 left off... and no this next film is not part of a planned trilogy or has anything to do with RoboCop, but it's Padilha peeling back the layers of corruption and violence -- both common place in his native country. Check out our interview below.
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