Director’s Statement about the film – Kiko Goifman

“I am an anthropologist and have been working with violence issues in Brazil for fourteen years. Unfortunately, violence is one of the keys to understand contemporary societies. In Brazil, the situation is indeed even more so. The most general conflicts can, in many cases, oppose institutionalized groups to unarmed individuals, creating, awfully often, human onslaught mass murder massacres.

There is a peculiar story about the documentary Acts of Men: It should have been a film about the daily lives of survivors from massacres in Brazil. Everything was planned for us to start shooting in April.

BUT REALITY DID NOT WAIT. On the last day of March, exactly one month before shooting would start in our schedule, things changed. A terrible massacre took place in Baixada Fluminense, near the city of Rio de Janeiro. It was the greatest massacre in the history of the city. 29 people were killed by policemen. Among the dead: the old, children, and adolescents. Except for the people who died in this massacre, ALL THE OTHERS HAVE THE FEELING THEY ARE SURVIVORS.

I spent one week thinking about my film, my schedule, and this massacre. I really didn’t know what to do. Only forget it and keep the old project? Impossible. If you are making a documentary, I really believe one thing: REALITY is much larger than our schedules. Then, I decided to go there. I have the best producers in the world and they agreed with this crazy change. Fear in the city and in our crew. The documentary now is about only one massacre, because we needed time to go deeper. Afraid of the professional killers, I went there and started shooting in a very poor place, meeting people at the margin of our society.

Acts of Men was shot in two complementary parts. First, the crew went to Baixada Fluminense few days after the massacre. Fear in the city. Second part: strong interviews, testimonies, urban landscapes and the daily life. One of the clear intentions of the documentary is to listen to the unofficial interpretations of such massacre

I tried to make an honest documentary. I didn’t make use of hidden cameras; I didn’t identify anyone who didn’t want me to. I wasn’t looking for blood, body pieces and horror images. In the film there are different versions about the idea of killing people in Baixada Fluminense, a very violent place.