An intense and gripping journey you will never forget, BUS 174 tells of an actual headline-grabbing event that occurred in Rio de Janeiro in 2000. The event in question is the hijacking of a commuter bus by a desperate young man raised in one of Rio's most oppressive slums. His spontaneous act triggered massive amounts of news coverage, captured the attention of a nation, and due to the absence of any police barricades, the resulting footage is alarmingly up-close and personal. Through extensive use of this startlingly intimate footage, along with probing interviews with hostages, law enforcement officers, journalists and friends and family of the hijacker, Padilha creates a thrilling, prismatic analysis of how one man's personal crisis became a national news phenomenon, as well as a commentary on how the media inflamed the very event it sought to document. BUS 174 is more than this year's best documentary. It is a heart-wrenching tale of the injustices of humanity, an edge of the seat thriller and an insight into what can seem real and what is the truth.