I smoke, I snort. I've killed and robbed. I'm a man.

Rating: 10/10 (24 December 2012)

Films about violence there are aplenty. Many of them are purely fictional and are glamorized bloodbaths made for special audiences. Necessary are only a few. For your consideration: Brazilian filmmaker Fernando Meirelles' "Cidade de Deus" dealing with the eponymous "City of God". Initially the name of a housing project created by the Brazilian government in the 1960s, the result was abandoned by the authorities after its creation and turned out to be anything but what its name suggests. Taken over by drug lords crime is the way to get by in these favelas. Killings are everyday business, and they happen on the side of the police, on the side of the drug dealers, or among the people in the slums themselves by exchanging their arguments with weapons. Since its creation, children growing up in these areas have learned to be part of the violence - they are on the receiving end and they practice it without questioning. They live to survive.
Meirelles's film is basically a documentary cloaked as film, based on Paulo Lins' real life accounts of what he witnessed himself, shot with actors who were picked from the slums. Unashamedly it covers full 20 years and shows all facets of violence that advance the spiral of death and destruction in the favelas. Meirelles uses state of the art cinematography combined with intentionally changing directorial styles in order to follow the various stages of despair and hopelessness. From the days of petty delinquents starting out where anything goes to gangs who commit mass murders, but are inevitably trapped in their doomed existence, Meirelles portrays the vicious circle with brutal honesty. "City of God" is best appreciated in conjunction with the documentary "News from a Personal War" (Lund/Salles) on the subject showing 10 year olds carrying AK-47s and police men who admit that they work in a war zone. Lots of funerals on both sides, no hope in between.