Direction: Alexandre Moratto
Country: Brazil
Following his debut with the Brazilian writer-director Alexandre Moratto in Socrates (2018), the young actor Christian Malheiros stars again in the latter’s sophomore feature, 7 Prisoners, a realistic hostage thriller about modern slavery, human trafficking and corruption. The film co-stars Rodrigo Santoro (Carandiru; 300) as the antagonist.
Leaving the audience with a bitter aftertaste, this disquieting and harrowing tale follows Mateus (Malheiros), an 18-year-old from a small village in the countryside who gladly accepts a job in a junkyard of São Paulo to provide a better life for his poor family. He and three other teenagers will work under the supervision of Luca (Santoro), becoming victims of an exploitative work system. With their IDs and phones confiscated and their families threatened, the prisoners try but fail to escape.
Mateus, the cleverest of the boys, has to find other ways to guarantee he’s comfortable and make his family proud of him. How far can he go? The line between victim and accomplice can be very thin, raising complex moral dilemmas.
It's not great filmmaking from Moratto, but this horrific rite of passage touches crucial points, so one can have the idea on how these exploitation schemes work, often headed by greedy politicians and linked to a corrupt police force. The denouement gets an extra half-star for its surprising implications.
