Sergio

Sergio Vieira de Mello has been described by director Greg Barker as the 'the most important guy you've never heard of'. A Brazilian diplomat, he had a 33-year career at the UN, mostly working for the High Commissioner for Refugees office in Geneva, serving time in Bangladesh, Sudan, Cyprus, Mozambique, Peru and Yugoslavia. Perceived as Kofi Annan's right-hand man, Vieira de Mello was given the often controversial job as head of the UN's Human Rights Commission in 2002, and then, in the fallout from America and Britain's military campaign in Iraq, was given the key and delicate role of the organisation's special representative there. He was killed, along with at least 20 others, when the Canal Hotel in Baghdad was bombed in 2003. Barker's revealing portrait, based on the biography Chasing the Flame by Samantha Power, presents Vieira de Mello as 'a cross between James Bond and Bobby Kennedy', a man willing to confront, and frequently charm, heads of state and war criminals, winning respect from the likes of Condoleezza Rice and Tony Blair, who both appear here. Vieira de Mello refused to let his complex private life compromise his position, and the film explores it, while also, through testimonies of eye witnesses, including the military paramedics who tried to save his life, recreating the fateful day he died.

Michael Hayden