Cidade de Deus (City of God)

A confronting portrait of present-day Brazil, told from inside a slum neighbourhood in Rio de Janeiro (the City of God). The main character describes in a kind of voice-over how his friends turned from small thiefs, who were relatively symphathetic, into unscrupulous drug bosses who slaughter their competitors without mercy. The director sketches the story almost casual, but the aggression and the sorrow are real. The sledgehammer blow of this different, ultraviolent world leaves you behind beaten…