Bruno Barreto’s Four Days in September is a retelling of events of 1969, when the American ambassador to Brazil was kidnapped by youthful, idealistic “Marxist” guerrillas seeking to free their comrades from detention and torture by the dictatorship ruling the country. Though the words of the ambassador, Charles Burke Elbrick, we learn how a career diplomat opposed the war in Vietnam as well as military rule in Brazil and thus shared the views of his captors, who released him when the government in Rio de Janeiro allowed fifteen of their comrades to go to freedom in México. The film shows how Marxists were born because of the excesses of military rule and carries home the message that the best hope for economic progress and political stability is the establishment of democratic rule. The film has also been nominated as the best film exposé of 1998, as the story brings to light facts that were not well known prior to the screening.