Point Blank

Courageous Brazilian documentary investigates police violence and corruption in Rio de Janeiro. Over the past twenty years, the police killed many innocent favela dwellers under the veil of the ‘war on drug cartels’.

Brazil’s favela dwellers are doubly affected: besides mafia bosses and drugs-related violence, they also face a violent and corrupt police force. Out of fear of reprisals they refrain from filing charges and dare not testify, which causes the legal system to fail and those responsible for the violence to remain unpunished.

The film starts with the brutal shooting of 1993 in the Vigario Geral slum, killing 21 people. The filmmaker uses numerous examples to reveal just how serious police violence, lawlessness and impunity really are in Brazil’s slums. Survivors, district dwellers and even a former member of an unofficial ‘police gang’ tell their story, the latter revealing how police officers sell weapons and drugs to gangsters in order to subsequently confiscate and resell them.