by Hudson Moura
Written and directed by Fabrício Bittar, The King of the Internet (O Rei da Internet), the closing film of the Brazil Film Fest, begins at the end of its protagonist’s extraordinary rise. In December 2005, during Operação Pontocom, a teenage Daniel Nascimento is arrested in Porto Alegre. From there, the film moves backwards, with Daniel narrating his own story and taking us to 2002, when, at thirteen, he was living in the seaside town of Guaratuba, Paraná, discovering the possibilities of an Internet that was still relatively new to much of Brazilian society. His account leaves little room for modesty: Daniel claims that, at the height of his hacking career when was arrested, he was considered the best hacker in Brazil.
The first-person narration establishes the film’s tone immediately. Daniel looks back from the present at the technological world of more than twenty years ago with irony, explaining the early Internet, how people were learning to use it, and, above all, how little most of them understood about its possibilities. What seems obvious today had to be discovered then, and Daniel’s advantage comes precisely from understanding the new technology faster than those around him. Bittar turns this technological learning process into comedy, but at times the treatment feels ethically too light, inviting us to laugh at and even admire Daniel’s ingenuity without sufficiently confronting the illegality of what he is doing.
From Jeitinho to Hacking
This is where The King of the Internet becomes particularly interesting as a Brazilian story. Daniel can be seen as a digital incarnation of the familiar figure of the Brazilian malandro. Traditionally, however, malandragem is more complex than simple dishonesty or criminality. The malandro navigates social rules without fully submitting to them, relying on intelligence, improvisation, charm, and audacity to move between established boundaries and find unconventional ways through the system. In my earlier discussion of Jorge Amado’s Gabriela, I associated this jeitinho brasileiro with an ability to move between opposites and reconcile categories that appear socially incompatible.
Daniel represents a darker digital transformation of this figure. The territory is no longer the street but the Internet: jeitinho becomes hacking, technological knowledge replaces traditional street cunning, and Daniel quickly discovers that understanding a system better than everyone else gives him power over those who do not. What initially resembles the playful transgression associated with malandragem gradually changes meaning. His ability to circumvent rules becomes a means of manipulation and exploitation, eventually crossing the boundary into crime. In this sense, Daniel does not simply reproduce the Brazilian malandro; he reveals what that cultural figure can become when cleverness, technology, and the desire to outsmart the system are combined with new forms of digital power.
From Teenage Hacker to the “King” of the Internet
At first, there is something almost playful about this. Hacking is a game, a demonstration of intelligence and, perhaps most importantly, a way for Daniel to obtain what he desperately wants: recognition of his talent. But his pleasure does not come only from mastering technology. It also comes from knowing that he can manipulate other people and circumvent the protections designed to stop him. His intelligence gradually becomes inseparable from his desire to prove that he is more clever than everyone else.
That attitude gives the film much of its humour, but it also makes Daniel a difficult character to embrace. There is an extraordinary degree of mockery and contempt in the way he regards almost everyone around him, including his own family. He is proud not only of his technological abilities but of his capacity to exploit ignorance, manipulate systems, and take advantage of other people. The title itself becomes revealing: Daniel does not merely want to participate in this new digital world; he imagines himself as its king, someone who has mastered a territory that others barely understand.
The film does not, however, romanticize that fantasy without consequences. We already know where the story is heading because Bittar begins with Daniel’s arrest. What initially appears to be the amusing adventure of a fifteen-year-old boy fooling a system and proving his intelligence gradually becomes something much more disturbing. The game turns into a profession, and that profession becomes criminal. Daniel enters the world of organized crime, transforming his abilities as a hacker into the skills of a professional criminal.
That progression also complicates the familiar mythology of the malandro. Exploiting “the system” may initially sound abstract or even rebellious, but systems ultimately belong to and affect society. Fraud has consequences beyond the institutions being manipulated: it generates new barriers, greater surveillance, additional costs, and increasingly restrictive mechanisms that everyone else eventually has to navigate. Daniel’s individual triumph over the system therefore carries a social cost that his self-celebrating narration does not necessarily want to acknowledge.
The Shadow of Elite Squad
Bittar based the film on Daniel Nascimento’s book DNpontocom and interviews with Nascimento about his life and family; Nascimento also served as a consultant on the production. This proximity to Daniel’s perspective helps explain the film’s strongly confessional structure. We are not simply watching what happened to him; we are constantly hearing his interpretation of what happened, delivered with the confidence and irony of someone who remains fascinated by his own ability to outsmart others.
This narrative strategy inevitably recalls Elite Squad (Tropa de Elite). Like that film, The King of the Internet has its protagonist narrating from the present, reconstructing past events while addressing the audience directly, commenting not only on himself but also on the institutions and people around him. It is an effective formula because it creates speed, humour, and intimacy while allowing complex information to be communicated quickly.
But the resemblance also becomes one of The King of the Internet’s limitations. The strategy worked so powerfully in Elite Squad that its influence here feels particularly visible, and Bittar does not always find enough formal distance from that model. The constant mockery and ironic commentary eventually become repetitive. More importantly, Daniel’s sarcastic voice can work against the film emotionally: the more amused he seems by his own intelligence and manipulation, the more arrogant and distant he becomes to the spectator.
A Necessary Counterpoint and a Convincing Reconstruction
The film finds an important counterpoint to Daniel’s self-celebrating narrative in the only girl for whom he seems to develop genuine feelings, Carolina (played by Débora Ozório). Significantly, she is also the person who ultimately condemns his behaviour, becoming a voice capable of seeing beyond the excitement of his technological ingenuity. Through her, the film finally creates some distance from Daniel’s fascination with his own exploits and makes more explicit how dangerous this apparently playful game has become. Their relationship is particularly effective because her judgment matters to him emotionally in a way that institutional or father authority does not: the criticism comes from someone whose recognition he genuinely desires.
João Guilherme’s performance as Daniel, however, is less convincing. He captures some of the character’s youthful arrogance and self-confidence, but his range feels limited, particularly as Daniel’s trajectory becomes darker and demands greater emotional complexity. Even his wig, conspicuous throughout the film, contributes to a certain artificiality in the characterization and occasionally makes Daniel feel more constructed than lived-in. The production surrounding him is considerably more persuasive. The film remarkably reconstructs the early-2000s period, particularly its technology and the experience of an Internet still being discovered, while the energetic editing moves effectively between different moments in Daniel’s story. The frequent flashbacks and flash-forwards complement the first-person narration, giving the film a speed and narrative fluidity that help sustain its momentum even when Daniel’s ironic commentary becomes repetitive.
The King of the Internet becomes most compelling when we understand Daniel not simply as a gifted hacker or a young criminal, but as a digital-age version of the Brazilian malandro—a familiar cultural figure transformed by the possibilities and dangers of a new technological world. His story turns technological knowledge into power, jeitinho into hacking, and cleverness into a dangerous conviction that being smarter than the system gives him the right to manipulate it. Bittar tells that story with considerable speed, humour, and irony, even if the relentlessly mocking first-person narration sometimes keeps us at an emotional distance from its protagonist. The result is an entertaining portrait of the early Brazilian Internet—and of a teenager who discovered its possibilities remarkably quickly, but also discovered how easily technological talent could become a tool for exploitation.
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Rating: 3.5/5
Film Info: The King of the Internet (O Rei da Internet) – Imdb