Sergio: A Film Review

Sergio - Released April 2020  •  Biography, Drama, History

A compelling view of top UN diplomat Sergio Vieira de Mello, whose life hangs in the balance during the most treacherous mission of his career.  Director: Greg Barker  Writers: Craig Borten (screenplay by), Samantha Power (based on the book 'Chasing the Flame: One Man's Fight to Save the World') Leading Actors: Wagner Moura, Ana de Armas, Brían F. O'Byrne

Photo: Wagner Moura, Senhorinha Gama Da Costa Lobo, and Ana de Armas in Sergio (2020)

So, what is there to say about yet another indie docudrama, on an endless Netflix list?  Plenty. 

Sergio is, in many ways, the embodiment of all the passionate, compelling, and driven spirits one encounters at the United Nations and in the field, on the many missions they undertake. For nearly two hours, it was hard to look away, even for an instant.

The film not only entertains but in a more insidiously great way, it educates us along the side lines of recent history. Co-author and former US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power helps illuminate a UN standing alongside warring nations and regional disputes ... in order to articulate a third way.  As the character of the late Sergio Vieira De Mello, passionately recreated by Wagner Moura, demonstrates: even for The World’s Mr. Fixit, sometimes peace building works ... at other times, it may end in unmitigated disaster.

Certainly the film will connect with globalists and those inclined toward international perspectives, especially regarding peace building and sustainable development.  All films are not meant for all audiences; yet this indie-docu-historical drama contains action, passion, current events, lust, intense landscapes and peoples, and more.  By more, I mean: one can appreciate the De Mello character as a challenging, charismatic and imperfect hero; not traditionally, as ‘the bad guy with a good heart anti-hero,’ but in this case the very good guy with an impossibly gracious and too-trusting heart.  

Ana de Armas, who plays De Mello’s Argentinian love interest, Carolina Larriera, is beautiful, inside and out - capturing the kind of woke, intelligent, spirited person one also regularly meets when the UN is open and all else is right with the world.  In fact, Maura’s and Armas’ characters possess additional, subtle messages about the nature and passion behind a commitment to UN staff work in the field.  De Mello’s conscience, Gil Loescher, played convincingly by Brían F. O'Byrne, was actually not one person but a composite of De Mello’s best staff comrades during several missions. In the end, O’Byrne’s character is seen figuratively and hideously losing his legs, a symbol that their very mission lost the ability to stand tall in the face of unmitigated corruption, sectarian violence, and inexperienced international intervention.

The spirit embodied in the three leading roles captures the essence of those one regularly meets working alongside United Nations' staff: these are passionate, diplomatic, honest, thoughtful, and gracious women and men ... often in an increasingly hostile world for those very attributes.

The film bounces through times, at home and abroad, from UNHQ to East Timor and beyond, and from great success to a last fateful campaign, where De Mello’s team is trying to guide a nation from dictatorship to self rule.  We become witnesses to a mission that ended historically poorly, even precursing the birth of a movement that would someday be called ISIS.  The final days of De Mello’s ultimate campaign, to help within what Loescher called a “sh*t show of a situation,” was led in real time by US envoy Paul Bremer and an American presence way over its head.  

Sergio has a strong and positive point of view about the work, goals, and mission of the UN as demonstrated ‘in the field;’ it presents a great heart, spirit, and a trust in global cooperation that becomes harder to defend as the pandemic, and growing nationalism, wear on. 

Still, Sergio is well worth your time.  As you scroll through your favorite viewing platforms while spending more time at home than usual these days, give Sergio a view.  It will say plenty - about all the best reasons why the United Nations is our enduring hope for peace and sustainable development. When the UN re-opens to the public someday, make a trip to see and touch the flag, still hole- and smoke-filled from a fateful Iraqi bombing, along with the tribute to His Excellency Sergio Vieira De Mello and his team, once gone in a flash but now forever immortalized in this worthy, entertaining, and compelling film.  It is not to be missed.

- Patrick Sciarratta