City of God

• City of God (Meirelles, 2002)
• Core Study Areas


  • Key Elements of Film Form (Cinematography, Editing, Mise-en-scene and Sound)
  • Meaning & Response (Representations and Aesthetics)
  • The Contexts of Film (Social, Political, Historical, Institutional and Technological)
• Context


  • Historical
  • Social
  • Technological
  • Political
• Film Form


  • Cinematography
  • Sound
  • Editing
  • Mise-en-scene
• Representation


  • Key Characters
  • Brazil
  • Power and Violence
• Key Scene Analysis


  • Opening Sequence
  • Being in Charge
  • The Apartment
  • The Runts Shooting
  • Benny's Farewell
  • Knockout Ned
  • The Closing Sequence
• City of God is an example of Brazilian national cinema. It is also an international film that secured worldwide distribution and critical acclaim.
• The settings in a Rio de Janeiro favela are 'authentically' Brazilian and the language is Portuguese, but there are enough genre characteristics to invite comparisons with Hollywood 'hood' films.
• The flamboyant and stylish spectacle of violence and poverty is narrated by a man/boy/observer of the action Buscapé/Rocket the photographer.
• Paulo Lins


  Brazilian author who grew up in the Cidade de Deus favela and published the novel City of God in 1997, which was adapted into the 2002 film
• City of God did not take long to build itself an audience and critical acclaim. It made an immediate impact in May 2002 at the Cannes Film Festival.
• Andrew Pulver of The Guardian: 'Hailed it as 'straight-out-of-the-box masterwork''
• Peter Bradshaw: 'Run, don't walk to the cinema, is all I can say...It's a movie with all the dials cranked up to 11, an overwhelming intoxicating assault on the senses, and a thriller so tense that you might have the red seat plush in front of you – or even some unfortunate hair – gripped in both fists.'
• Sick-boy.com: 'If the first five minutes of City of God don't suck you in, it's time to scoop out your eyes and get new ones.'
• Philip French: 'Had City of God opened last week it would have been on my 10 best list of 2002. It will be a remarkable year that keeps this film off anyone's 2003 list.'
• Nev Pierce, in the BBC Film Review: 'Cinema doesn't get more exhilarating than this.'
• Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian: 'One of the most exciting, powerful and moving examples of New Latin American Cinema… thrilling and sophisticated filmmaking.'
• In Brazil the film was released in September 2002. In three months it had attracted an audience of 3.2 million, a record for a Brazilian film. Its unprecedented popularity earned it a second release in February 2004.
• The film provoked debates, encouraged by Meirelles' visits to universities and unions. During the 2002 Brazilian Presidential Campaign the film was shown to the Brazilian cabinet. The successful candidate, Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva, told Meirelles that the film changed his policies.
• Fernando Ferreira Meirelles


  Brazilian film director, producer and screenwriter, best known for co-directing the film City of God
• Meirelles read the book Paulo Lins's City of God in 1997 and decided to adapt it to film, which was done in 2002. The actors in it were selected among the inhabitants of slums.
• The message of the film is...
• My thoughts on the film are...
• The style of the film includes...
• Key Characters


  • Rocket
  • Stringy
  • Goose, Clipper and Shaggy
  • Lil Dice/Ze
  • Benny
  • Knockout Ned
  • Shorty
  • Carrot
  • Blacky
  • Tiago
  • Anjelica
  • Otto
  • The Runts
  • Bernice
  • Tuba
  • Big Boy
  • Dona Zelia
  • Steak and Fries
  • Gerson
  • Marina
  • Rogerio Reis
  • Knockout Ned's Girlfriend
  • Shorty's Wife
  • Gun Dealer
  • Melonhead
• The film is grounded in the social context of Brazil, including the high levels of poverty, inequality, gang violence and the drug trade in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro.
• The film is influenced by the Cinema Novo movement in Brazil, which aimed to transform the country's image through critical and realistic depictions of exploitation, violence and deprivation.
• Rocket


  Photographer from the favelas who is given a camera by Li'l Ze, allowing him to depart the favelas
• If Rocket represents hope


  Then Li'l Ze represents hopelessness - there can be no way out of the City of God for him except through death
• Benny is linked to the outside world through his relationship with

  Angelica (a middle-class Sergeant's daughter) and Tiago, whom he enlists to help him adopt the style and attitude of conventional secure city life
• Benny's death shows


  The inevitability and hopelessness of favela life, mirroring the fate of his older brother Shaggy
• The passage of time in the film is from the late sixties to the early eighties
• Although the deprivation of the social environment remains constant, the nature of the slums appears to change
• We are encouraged to view the earlier scenes at points with an almost nostalgic sense of innocence compared with what follows
• The film is quite bleak in its portrayal of a continuing spiral of violence where each generation becomes more desensitised, corrupt and casually more violent that the one that preceded
• The story of the Tender Trio opens up the first act of the film

  1. Tone is more romanticised than events which follow

  2. Shaggy, Clipper and Goose are perhaps more wayward than they are evil

  3. They are Robin Hood characters, who hijack gas trucks for the good of the local people and they redistribute wealth

  4. Their capers (crashing cars, jumping into bed with neighborhood women) seem almost comedic and amateurish
• The favelas of the sixties


  • More expansive and 'natural'
  • Open areas with playing children (football/kites)
  • Families (Goose's parents, Berenice's mother)
  • Colours are warm pinks and browns
• Li'l Dice's murderous rampage highlights his difference to the tender trio, and Shaggy's desperate attempts to flee the slums highlight the changes in conditions that will become obvious as we move to the second act
• The story of the Tender Trio retains some of the romantic, warm imagery of the earlier poetic representations of outlaws, social bandits, echoing the cangaceiros, the revolutionary outsiders of earlier Brazilian films but there is often a disjunction between the image we see on screen and what we hear Rocket say
• The image of Bené and Dice with their arms around each other laughing will recur later in the film as a sepia coloured insert, the recollection of a lost more innocent time