City of God = Cidade de Deus

Award winning cinema, this directorial masterpiece by Fernando Meirelles is violent, disturbing and skillful storytelling. The story unfolds in the slums of Rio de Janeiro’s “City of God”, a housing project built in the 1960s that becomes by the ‘80s a city engulfed by gang warfare. Based on a true story and a novel by Paulo Lins, young Busca-Pe (aka Rocket) grows up amongst this violence and we learn the history of the gangs through a series of stories told in flashback style with him as narrator. Rocket, through all of the horror, decides his own fate by becoming a photographer and his ability is his way out of the ‘City’. Gangsters, guns and violence are so accepted that they become the norm to a new and much younger generation happy to perpetuate the lifestyle learned from birth, reinforced by poverty. Nominated for four Academy Awards. In Portuguese with English subtitles. WARNING: SOME SCENES MAY DISTURB.