NEW DATE: Special Screening – Sergio

“My message is very simple. Never forget the real challenges and the real rewards are out there, in the field, where people are suffering, where people need you” – Sergio Viera de Mello.

Based on Pulitzer Prize-winning author Samantha Power’s biography Chasing the Flame, Sergio revolves around the story of Sergio Vieira de Mello – the world’s “go-to guy,” a cross between James Bond and Bobby Kennedy who’d probably seen more misery, more human suffering than any man of his generation.

Described as “elegant” by Condaleezza Rice, the highly respected, and charismatic Brazilian UN Diplomat was the only senior United Nations official able to charm the notoriously anti-UN Bush Administration. Urged by President Bush, Tony Blair, Condoleezza Rice and Kofi Annan to lead what was ultimately a flawed UN mission to Iraq shortly after the invasion, Sergio was the only individual who had successfully led an occupied nation towards independence in East Timor, just two years before.

Sergio did not wish to go to Iraq, but went never the less assuming the Bush administration would value his advice from the field, work with him to lead Iraq to independence. Instead, he found himself accused by the growing insurgency as being a tool of the Americans and, on August 19, 2003, Sergio himself became a target.  
 
A huge truck bomb exploded directly beneath his office, instantly killing many UN employees, including members of his own “A Team.” But Sergio remained alive somewhere under the rubble. 
 
At the bottom of a deep, narrow shaft two soldiers found Sergio. For all the lives he had saved across his long and extraordinary career, his own was now entirely in the hands of  these two unforgettable men.

“Sergio” in all its heartbreaking truth, evokes not only inspiration but also a deep admiration for a man that even the most cynical of us will acknowledge as one of life’s rare heroes.

Directed by Greg Barker
90 mins
2009