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The Documentary: Falling

Arena Amazonia stadium in Manaus

05/09/2018 GMT

Falling

BBC World Service - The Documentary, Falling

The true story behind a Brazilian construction worker's death

Mônica Vasconcelos goes in search of the truth behind a Brazilian construction worker's death.

A construction worker dies and, instinctively, we blame him. Why wasn’t he wearing his safety belt? But what if we are wrong? What if all of us – families, colleagues, companies and society as a whole – have been failing workers who have lost their lives or been injured at work, all over the world?

22 year old Marcleudo De Melo Ferreira was working at the top ring of the Manaus World Cup Arena, in Brazil, when, at 4am on December 14th, 2013, he fell to his death. 

In “Falling”, BBC Brasil’s reporter and presenter Mônica Vasconcelos goes in search of the truth behind Marcleudo’s death. In the process, she learns how she herself, as a journalist, unjustly wronged Marcleudo when she reported on his death in a BBC Brasil article, published on the aftermath of the World Cup in her country. She waited four years to set things right. And in order to do so, she counts on one of the most beautiful Brazilian songs ever written, Construção, by composer and writer Chico Buarque. She also enlists the expertise of a former Safety Inspector for the Brazilian Public Ministry of Labour, currently a professor of Economics at the Federal University of Bahia, Vitor Filgueiras. And she travels to the small country town of Limoeiro do Norte, in Northern Brazil, to gather moving, poignant testimonies by Marcleudo’s family.

Image: The Arena Amazonia in Manaus (Credit: Reuters)

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