The winner of the Sundance Film Festival award for Best Documentary, Manda Bala (Send a Bullet) began with a mannequin waiting behind a piece of bulletproof glass, juxtaposed against scenes from a frog farm during its screening Thursday in Wasserman Cinematheque. It's mostly impressions, shot as if it were a traditional movie, on film and full of interesting camera angles; an aerial perspective on Sao Paulo really places us, though as foreigners we don't actually know where we are. The viewers are introduced to the characters and their interpreters, sharing the screen with a wide perspective, the interpreter on the far left, the speaker on the right, talking in Portuguese and emphasizing perhaps the distance between the actual words and the translation. Director Jason Kohn '01 allows us to hear both, the Portuguese and the English, depending on the character, and the stage is set. The movie examines politics and corruption and frog farming and plastic surgery in Brazil, and crime as an industry, and poverty. It is really a movie-there is a plot, there is off-screen action, there is a bad-good guy and several tough good guys-and it is telling a true story.

Kohn said that he had two things before he started filming: an idea about frog farming and an idea about plastic surgery. The frogs are beautiful, green, beady eyes shining, by the hundreds in ponds everywhere. Some are alarmingly large; others, not so much. They are eating frogs, bred and marketed as such, bags and boxes full of them all over the film, finally breaded and fried and eaten by a Brazilian woman after we see the harvesting and the slaughter, the packaging and the shipping in huge quantities via air freight. The farm is beautiful yet industrial, set in what seems to be the countryside, somewhere outside Sao Paulo, where most of the action takes place.

Kohn's idea about the plastic surgery was then linked to the frog farms-the farms are used to launder dirty money from corrupt politicians, the money is held by a dramatically small number of rich individuals ; the rich cause the poverty because of the concentration, the poor rob and kidnap the rich and the middle class for money and ransom and the rich and middle class pay for the plastic surgeries required to replace ears chopped off as evidence provided by the kidnappers. The kidnappers then provide their children and extended families with food, clothing and shelter in the sweltering slums of Sao Paulo, which seem to extend right up to the doorsteps of the rich, and the circle closes when those children and those rich people eat the frog legs so thoughtfully packaged at the mass-production farms around the country.

It's a great documentary for its variety-there are things happening everywhere, all the time, keeping the viewer enthralled, while creating a sort of natural movie drama atypical of current documentaries. The movie draws you in. The documentary took a long time to make: four and a half years to film and another eighteen months to edit. It is actually on film, and has a richness and depth to its coloring that just can't be emulated in a digital format; I hadn't seen a movie on the big screen in quite awhile that had that depth-even digital prints meant to go on 35 mm projectors don't have the sparkle and clarity of Kohn's piece. The movie also has a startlingly good soundtrack, primarily old-school Brazilian music.

Kohn said that he practically had to beg to cover parts of his story-the kidnapper Margrinko, for example, was actually a kidnapper and he admits having killed people, including policemen. He appeared on camera in a stocking mask and Kohn said he had to pay the man, the 'don' of part of the slums, for his services.

Another man, Kohn's representative of the very privileged upper-class is featured in the film because he purchased several bulletproof cars and because of his paranoia. He discusses the paranoia required of the rich of living in Sao Paulo and also describes the money he has to spend-some $450,000 (compared to $135,000 in the US) for a Porsche because of the extra fees for bulletproofing, and then the defensive driving courses, and the GPS monitoring and the chips and the various other counter-kidnapping devices. The police, who number 80 in the kidnapping division, have a population of 20 million to watch over, attempt to discuss their cases, while showcasing their numerous war wounds.

Kohn's film is striking to an American audience because it is so new-those who have not studied any part of South American history will be surprised to learn of the people and the places and the problems of the country; the stereotype of corruption down south is proven true several times.

The movie has been banned in Brazil, primarily because it features several politicians and other footage in a less-favorable light, and public figures in Brazil have a say in what's said about them in the media; the famous person has to allow footage of himself to be presented in order for the film to be shown.

Kohn says that a distribution deal is in the works for the movie. The movie was funded in part by Brandeis's Mortimer Hayes Fellowship, private investors, the sale of Kohn's car and a Sundance Documentary Fund Grant. It should be out in theaters within the next year.