Filmmaker Hector Babenco dies aged 70 in Brazil

Filmmaker Hector Babenco died aged 70 yesterday (Jul. 13) from a cardiac arrest. He had been hospitalized in São Paulo on Tuesday (12). Born in Argentina, he earned Brazilian citizenship in 1977.

Among his most famous movies are Pixote, Carandiru, and Kiss of the Spider Woman, which won him an Academy Award nomination for best director in 1985.

Carandiru won Babenco several awards both in Brazil and abroad. The film was based on the book by medical doctor Drauzio Varella, Estação Carandiru (Lockdown: Inside Brazil's Most Dangerous Prison in the 2012 English translation by Alison Entrekin). The book describes the lives of inmates at the now-defunct detention center in the northern part of São Paulo. There, on October 2, 1992, a riot police raid left 111 inmates dead in what became known as the Carandiru Massacre.

Translated by Mayra Borges