City of God

Breathless and gripping, director Fernando Meirelles tells the story of poverty and drugs, ambition and violence with virtuoso editing sequences from the perspective of those who experience them on a daily basis. The film CITY OF GOD, based on the novel "Cidade de Deus" by Paulo Lins, has caused a sensation from day one.

"City of God", or "Cidade de Deus" in Portuguese, is the name of a suburb in Rio de Janeiro where organised crime spread between 1960 and 1980 and could no longer be stopped. Our opening film is also set here. A burning world from the perspective of a group of young people who are in front of the camera for the first time for this film and tell their own real stories from the Brazilian favelas. Told as a cross-generational epic, the film addresses violence and its long-lasting consequences in a broken society."