director in overdrive tells familiar story of poverty = a really awful existence

Rating: 6/10 (4 March 2004)

City of God is about a district in Rio or some Brazilian city where poverty is rife and known as the city of god. Told through the eyes of one of the inhabitants who witnesses the growth of crime amongst the young men and boys of the area, the story is supposed to be true and unhappily it looks an honest enough assessment of any rundown poverty stricken urban neighbourhood no body cares about. the cycle of crime sounds familiar, using kids as couriers for drugs, random killings, turf wars, addiction, hopelessness, squalor and filth. told at a fast pace in a episodic story character by character, the place soundslike one step up from a concentration camp [see the work of Primo Levi about what thats like] Oddly the storyteller goes on to leave the ghetto by becoming a photojournalist, a similar story was told here on Irish TV by a young man who was in trouble from age 8 till his early 20's when he learnt to write and became a journalist so he could break the cycle of damaging behaviour he had. the truth is to get an education seriously as characters in the film are constantly telling the storyteller but he gets out by luck mainly and having a strong character. not a brilliant film, a relentlessly told story, violent and depressing, though honest 10 out of 10 for that; it should be labelled a docudrama rather than a film but then less people would see it, but I wonder if I or anyone really know what it means? If this goes on in Brazil and Ireland why not everywhere in which case ....