I liked it and Walter Salles(Central Station) too...

Rating: 10/10 (24 August 2002)

Brazilian reality has surpassed the majority of attempts to portrait it in fiction. The acceleration of social decomposition has transformed violence into a banality.
Few books have captured so completely this state of affairs (the Brazilian apartheid and the outlawing of the favelas), as does Cidade de Deus, by Paulo Lins. Written by a son of the favela, Cidade de Deus reveals, for the first time, how this ever increasing process of incrimination has ended by overflowing into drug dealing enterprises and the struggle for power in the hillside shantytowns.
Cidade de Deus, the film by Fernando Meirelles, is an extremely powerful transposition of Paulo Lins's book. With a tremendous impact, modern and visceral, the film counts almost exclusively on the acting abilities of youngsters coming from the favelas around Rio de Janeiro.
Meirelles and co-director Katia Lund worked with these kids for over six months, in a laboratory process comparable only to that undertaken by Hector Babenco while filming Pixote.
Orchestrated by a director with profound knowledge of cinematographic grammar, Cidade de Deus renews Brazilian filmmaking, and offers the spectators the possibility of understanding the roots of social chaos which characterize our country today a little better.
WALTER SALLES