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José Padilha

You may call Brazilian director José Padilha many things, but single-minded is certainly not one of them. With conservative audiences condemning the filmmaker for allegedly sympathizing with degenerate criminals in his 2002 documentary "Bus 174," and leftists calling him out for siding with the corrupt Brazilian police force in 2007's "Elite Squad," Padilha has proven that he is more interested in telling all possible sides to a story rather than pandering to any one audience. His worldly viewpoints behind the camera didn't come from film school; he studied international politics and English literature at Oxford before branching out as a director. Padilha teamed up with Bráulio Mantovani--a partnership that held strong throughout several more projects--for his debut feature, "Bus 174," showing the tragic events of a 2000 bus hijacking and the inadequate law enforcement's attempt to contain the gunman. He tried his hand at fictional filmmaking with "Elite Squad," a gritty action movie depicting the hardships facing members of a police battalion, which earned Padilha the coveted Golden Bear Award at the Berlin Film Festival, and stands as one of the most financially successful Brazilian films of all time. Eager to complete what he considered a trilogy with "Bus 174" and "Elite Squad" as the first two entries, he wrote and directed the smash hit "Elite Squad: The Enemy Within" in 2010.