City of God (2002)

Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund's film City of God (Portuguese: Cidade de Deus) is a crime drama film. The film depicts around 20 years of the life of a boy living in one of the slums of Rio de Janeiro known as the City of God. While just about everyone associated with him is a violent gang member, the protagonist is not a criminal and dreams of being a photojournalist. The film is a sort of coming-of-age film as it shows the character growing up and the troubles he tries to overcome. Overall, the film's plot tends to be mostly outstanding.

The film stars mostly a bunch of no-name actors who grew up in the slums of Brazil, some of whom in the actual City of God. In this respect the film is a lot like Bicycle Thieves and just like in that film the acting tends to be rather good.

Given the dearth of world-renowned films from Brazil it goes without saying that this is one of the better Brazilian films ever made. The film was nominated for four Academy Awards (amazingly, it was not nominated for best foreign language film) winning none. The film is well-received by critics and fans alike (it currently ranks 16th on the IMDB's top 250 film list). While the film probably isn't one of the 20 greatest films ever, it is well-deserving of all of the accolades it has received and is certainly one of the better films of this decade.

92.5/100
A-

I loved this movie!!

gdennis59 wrote:

I loved this movie!!

Yeah?

There's a sequel out, City of Men. I want to see it, too.

I should go see that.