Where were you in January 2013? Many of the students in this school were too young to remember; most likely, only the teachers and staff might have some remembrance of this time. I remember I was eight years old, sitting in my cousin’s bed, when I heard a nightclub in Santa Maria had caught on fire. Back then, I was too young to understand what was happening; I even joked that I would never go to nightclubs like that when I grew up. However, ten years later, Netflix released a TV show that narrates not only that night but also all the events that followed it. The Endless Night is a true and heart-wrenching story about love, grief, and the complexity of all of these feelings.
The TV show starts by following the day of a group of young people living and enjoying their lives. One is going on a trip to meet a friend, another is celebrating her 20th birthday, and others are studying at their respective universities. That is until they all decided to attend a party that night in the most famous nightclub in Santa Maria, Boate Kiss. However, none of them could have imagined the horror that would ensue.
The fire in the nightclub is shown in the first and second episodes of the series. Those scenes are difficult to watch and not recommended for everyone; if you are sensitive to these topics, be wary. The show demonstrated those people's despair and fear while running for their lives, trying to escape the club and the smoke. The dark and crowded scenes inside the club contrast with sets of the parents searching for their kids, and they work together to create a tone of fear and desperation that completely captures the viewer's attention and emotions.
However, the most brutal scenes to watch are when the parents receive the news of their children's deaths. No matter your age, gender, or if you are a parent or not, these scenes are heart-wrenching nonetheless. Everyone I have talked to about this series agrees that these are the show's most emotional scenes.
After the accident, the series follows the lives of victims and survivors grappling with grieving sons, daughters, and friends while searching for justice for those responsible for the 242 lives lost that night. Furthermore, the show also follows the police investigation of what caused the accident, which revealed several irregularities in the nightclub that ranged from the space having no emergency exits and lights to the whole nightclub being covered in a toxic foam – that, when burned, would release a gas similar to the one used in Nazi gas chambers. Even with all those irregularities, the club had remained open, with no accurate inspection from the fire department and the government of Santa Maria.
The title “Todo dia a mesma noite” (The Endless Night) is a reference to the book from which it was inspired, but it was also masterfully chosen for this show because it is shown through the lives of the parents and survivors that, even though the tragedy occurred ten years before, they are still reliving the trauma of that night. After all, the Brazilian judicial system failed to bring justice to all those responsible for the accident because, to this day, no one is in jail for their wrongdoings and for being accountable for the loss of hundreds of lives.
The cinematography, matched with the beautiful writing of this show, creates a narrative that generates empathy for the victims and helps bring awareness to one of the biggest fire tragedies in Brazil". This show serves to remind society how much being careless with other people’s lives can cost. To this day, there are hundreds of people closely related to those who died in the fire that suffer from the consequences of the actions of a handful of people.