Carandiru was Brazil's largest prison, a grim enclosure that worked as a brutal self-regulating microcosm of the world outside it. The film is seen thru' the eyes of a doctor who gets to know the prisoners, drug dealers, rapists, murderers, remandees et al, and we get to know some of them thru' flashbacks to their pre-prison life. This is the story of how these men's time shuddered to a halt when riot police entered the compound in October 1992 and shot dead 111 unarmed prisoners. From the director of the sublime 'Kiss of The Spider Woman', Carundiru is an unflinching re-enactment, leavened by a good deal of humour, of real events; controversial as much for its sympathetic slant towards the prisoners as it is for the portrayal of what actually took place on that fateful day. Superb.