Drama · Crime
Brazilian (Cidade de Deus)
2002 · Directed by Fernando Meirelles · 129 min
Rio de Janeiro, from the late 1960s into the early 1980s: a housing project on the city's edge becomes home to a generation of children who grow up around crime. Rocket, a quiet observer with a dream of becoming a photographer, narrates a kinetic, darkly funny and unsparing story of the neighbourhood and the people who shape it.
Why it matters in cinema history
A defining film of early 2000s world cinema and the best-known work of Brazil's 'retomada' revival, it fused Hollywood-style pace with social realist subject matter and reshaped how global audiences saw Brazil.
Watch with intention
Watch how the film's speed and style pull you in, and ask what that style does to your sense of the violence it shows.
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