It’d be fair to say that Jason Kohn is probably not the most popular man in Brazil at the moment. Maker of the Sundance-winning Manda Bala (Send a Bullet), Kohn takes a sweeping look at the corruption and inequality rife in Brazil, and makes a cogent and powerful documentary in the process. Kohn used to be a researcher for documentary legend Errol Morris, and Morris has been a big mentor in Kohn’s filmmaking career. You can also see traces of Morris’ style in the film – off-centre interviews, the inclusion of translators into the shot (reportedly based on an interview Morris did with Mikhail Gorbachev), and an almost pitiless approach to some of his subjects. Indeed a major criticism of Morris has been an apparent tendency to make fun of some of his ‘weirder’ subjects, and Kohn arguably at times treads this line (particularly with the plastic surgeon). For the most part however, he manages to get some fascinating testimony from a wide variety of his sources.

Kohn has a broad scope with this documentary. And arguably, it could be said, a too broad a scope. He has a few subjects – a frog farmer, the Attorney-General, a kidnapper, a plastic surgeon, a businessman who fears being kidnapped, and a kidnap victim. They are all drawn together, somewhat tenuously it appears initially, but by the end make a strong case for Brazil rotting from within. It’s a dog-eat-dog (or frog-eat-frog) world, where the rich eat the poor, and the poor bicker among themselves for the scraps.

It is therefore of no surprise that Manda Bala was banned in Brazil. It’s a frequently entertaining and disquieting look at a rather sordid situation in the country. Businessmen take defensive driving courses to outrun gun-wielding kidnappers. A plastic surgeon talks about God guiding his hands while re-attaching people’s ears. Little children pretend to kidnap each other, instead of playing ‘cops and robbers’. If anything, this documentary will do little for the Brazilian tourist industry. The film’s scope also proves somewhat problematic. There is little hope at all – which may indeed be a fair conclusion – but it does seem a little too reductive to say this sums up Brazil as a country as a whole (when there is obviously a lot more there that could easily recommend it). It seems almost too easy to wander down to a third world country and find evidence of corruption and then bring it back to a first country so we can all point at it and say, “thank god, it’s not us”. That said, you’ve got to admire Kohn’s guts for some of the footage he has obtained, and he draws a thoughtful and rather brutal view of Brazil – one that does highlight the urgent need for change.—Brannavan Gnanalingam