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BRAZIL · 2002
City of God
Synopsis
In the poverty-stricken favelas of Rio de Janeiro in the 1970s, two young men choose different paths. Rocket is a budding photographer who documents the increasing drug-related violence of his neighborhood, while José “Zé” Pequeno is an ambitious drug dealer diving into a dangerous life of crime.
Cinema Atlas Connection
City of God is the most internationally visible Brazilian film since Cinema Novo — and it carries that tradition's political commitment alongside its kinetic energy. Glauber Rocha's Cinema Novo manifesto demanded films about Brazilian poverty made with Brazilian aesthetic energy. Meirelles answered that call four decades later. But the direct ancestor is Pixote — Héctor Babenco's 1980 film about street children in São Paulo, which is rawer, more devastating, and less widely seen. Pixote is on MUBI.
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