the #1 MUST SEE film of Latin America

Rating: 10/10 (19 May 2011)

In the first sixty seconds of the film, there are more than seventy camera cuts moving between sharpening knives, chickens, vegetables, musical instruments, and other abrupt scenes. Director, Walter Salles effectively introduces the audience to the tension and constant sentiment of impending danger in the City of God with the fast-paced cuts of images and sound.
Cidade de deus is a fantastic movie set in the slums of Brazil where drugs, crime, domestic violence, and murder are almost mundane considering the frequency with which these events occur. The story of several boys who are outcasts of society because of their race and extreme poverty is narrated by "Rocket," following each child from near innocence in his young years to young adult life (which, unfortunately, seems to be the average lifespan in the city) filled with narcotic trafficking monopolizing the city based on this business conducted by twenty year olds.
Without a political or social agenda, Salles provides for the audience the pure, raw, and gritty facts of lives of poverty in Brazil. His audience cannot leave the movie untouched by the despair and horror of the stories of these children, and in this, Salles achieves a captive audience, heartbroken by the reality, which is too unknown to the world.