If you run you're dead...if you stay, you're dead.

''You need more than guts to be a good gangster, you need ideas.''

Two boys growing up in a violent neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro take different paths: one becomes a photographer, the other a drug dealer.

Alexandre Rodrigues: Buscapé - Rocket

Leandro Firmino: Zé Pequeno - Li'l Zé

Guns, drugs, ambitious youths, gangs, killing...What's not more enticing and shocking than City Of God? It has all those serious issues in a potent mix unafraid to tell it's tale of brutal truthful storytelling.
Brilliant narration that whole heartedly pulls you in. All characters in the story solidify similarly to a spider web newly spun. Detail is not enough to describe City Of God as a word alone.



Feast your eyes upon one of the greatest films directed by acclaimed Director Fernando Merielles.
Katia Lund assists as co-director and the Writers: Paulo Lins, the writer of the novel and Braulio Mantovani whom worked on the screenplay.

City Of God known in it's original language consisting of Portuguese Cidade de Deus is a way of life that unfortunately exists in parts of the world. As bad and evil as it may be to people, I oddly felt a strange satisfaction and compelling allure mixed with awe upon the power of wielding a gun and it's granting of godly superiority upon it's wielder. When shooting and killing is as easy as breathing, problems in your life pale in comparison, they are nothing in comparison to City Of God.
''If you run you're dead...if you stay, you're dead.'' The words resound in our ears. This sums up the hopeless plight of the characters trapped within this chaotic, violent place. A place extremely hard to escape or survive.

Based on the Writer Paulo Lins' eyewitness testimony surrounding the bloody turf war, that for years raged in Rio De Janeiro's most notorious slum, City Of God contains enough indelible characters and unforgettable stories to fill several stories or individual films. After some five years of preparation, director Meirelles marshals the wealth of material into a dizzying visionary variety of vivacious ways, finding (even after two hours of gun battles) new ways to shoot and edit a sequence.

However, if City Of God was noted chiefly for inventive editing, then it would be merely a remarkable technical testament; The film's real ace is the kids. Through an exhaustive series of open auditions and workshops, Meirelles and co-director Lund not only unearthed dozens of non-professionals right out of the favelas, but also encouraged them to improvise large sections of the script.
The scene in which two young kids must decide whether they want to be shot in the hand or the foot contains some of the most powerful acting ever committed to film with devastating consequences.
The multiple stories told are simply beautiful; In truth you feel more than merely a spectator, you feel part of their world. Rocket, Ze, Bene, Thiago and Sandro...Their ordeals and transgressions are ones we share by their side. The photography also in this was fascinating showing there's more than one way of shooting and shows the genius behind the camera and in front of it in essential proportions.
The shot where we see a lot of dead bodies lying on huge blocks of concrete was recreated from an award-winning photograph taken during the drug war portrayed in the movie. An example of photography; in essence becoming more than just simply a process but a means of showing the World what is happening in parts we are ignorant of.

A masterpiece, a true story...my review, my words, a small tribute in return for the greatness that is City Of God.

It ends how it begins..
With no Winners...

10/10