Fernando Meirelles
City Of God (Citade de Deus)

We are in Brazil, around the mid-'60s.

The City of God is a neighborhood in disarray in Rio de Janeiro, still under construction but already poised to be abandoned or to become a favela; a fertile ground for crimes and violence, but not yet sufficiently rotten for anarchy.

That arrives in the '80s.

The two boys whose childhood we followed are now adults, the events that saw the death of their family members and friends are in the past, and they have now embarked on different paths: the first has chosen not to become a criminal and to suffer while waiting for the opportunity that will drag him out of hell. The other, who had already distinguished himself for the atrocities committed since his childhood, has surrounded himself with loyal followers and decided to make the entire neighborhood his own. Obviously, the bloodbath that will mark the beginning of his rise will be only the prelude to the actual carnage, which will drag on excessively until there are only two clans left fighting each other.

Probably the best feature film ever to come to us from the country of samba, "The City of God" is more than a film and more than a documentary: it is a carbon copy of the real situation in the favelas. A climate of degradation that infiltrates the people themselves, a place where life is worth nothing and where violence buys what money cannot. It is no coincidence that the action is always shown to us with the eye and the narrating voice of one of the protagonists, the immersion is total, and the climate of insecurity and horror becomes palpable. It quickly becomes clear how the law of the strongest is the only institution present and to which everyone must submit: it doesn't matter if the one who makes a mistake is an 8-year-old child, nothing will prevent him from receiving a bullet in the head.

The cast, although in their early experiences, delivers a performance of excellent level, more real than reality; an agile and intelligent direction, which relies on a bomb-proof screenplay that in some ways recalls some of Scorsese's writings, does the rest.