Manda Bala Dazzles at DocNight in Denver

Last night marked my first trip down to the Starz FilmCenter for DocNight, a monthly documentary series presented by the Denver Film Society. This month's film was Manda Bala, a truly outstanding documentary that weaves together several story lines to paint a gritty and rich portrait of corruption in Brazil.

The film, directed by Jason Kohn (who also appeared in-person for Q&A at last night's event) was the product of over five years of hard work and emphasized the concept of the documentary as a form of cinematic storytelling. Kohn explained that his goal with Manda Bala was not to make an informational, political message movie, but instead to showcase his subject matter using the most cinematic methods. Those methods included creating an overarching metaphor using cannibal frogs and creating characters of his unique interview subjects.

The "cast" included several members of the Sao Palo police and anti-corruption task force as well as victims and perpetrators of various crimes. We meet police officers who tally up their gunshot wounds like they were fantasy football wins, an ultra-paranoid member of Sao Palo's upper class who boasts about his bullet-proof Porche and goes only by the spy-like moniker of Mr. M, the owner of a frog farm that seems to be at the center of a large-scale political controversy, and even a kidnapping victim who describes the way Alfred Hitchcock movies played a role in her imprisonment.

One of the most fascinating characters is a plastic surgeon who specializes in creating artificial ears, a growing industry in a region where kidnappers frequently send the appendages to victims' families to demand higher ransoms. Though he is a truly skilled surgeon, he seems to have an almost unreal God complex and truly believes that the lord works through him during the procedures.