“It is not a film about carnival in Rio,” he said.On the street the policeman moved in the steady rain. He put one foot out in front of him and lowered it, slowly, to the pavement. He showed no signs of rhythm.”It is a film,” he went on, “about beautiful things coming out of the gutter. It is a film about how gangsters give pleasure and create virtue!”Carnival in Rio – the one day in the year on which the people of the shanty towns and the back streets might be said to enjoy or control their own lives – is run by the “bicheiros”.

They are the kings of the underworld who, when they are not running the carnival, shooting each other or doing drug deals, are in charge of the numbers game – Brazil’s illegal, unofficial lottery. In May 1993, a judge called Denise Frossard – who is either very brave or very foolish – sentenced 14 of them to jail for “formation of an armed gang”. They are now in prison and she is under armed guard at a secret address”I think,” said Andre, “we will make an interview with her. Nobody else has done this.”Andre has the lumpy, decent look of a rural priest People trust him; because he is completely trustworthy. He sits in front of them with his camera, nodding his big patient head, and his subjects tell him the most intimate secrets of their heart.

He has made films with Islamic fundamentalists in Iran, with government stooges in North Korea and with Russian peasants hoping to break into the striptease business. But the people in his films, even when they are politicians, crooks or tarts, have a curious innocence about them. The innocence, I think, comes from Andre.”We will film,” went on Andre, “in the favelas – the slums where everything is controlled by drug barons and where everyone is armed It will be very dangerous to shoot there. Also we will photograph the scenes from carnival that are not seen on the cable television. There will be dancing and costumes and guns and squalor and life and death.”"That sounds like an Omnibus to me,” I said.”He was in the middle of a gun battle,” said Roger We were sitting in the same restaurant six months later.