Check here and see in Brazilkids "City of God" trailler, directed by Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund.
© 2002 Lumiére - 02' 29''.

You can see it on two connection versions:
- for 56 k
- and for widebroad net connection.
If you need, download here the players:
Quick time
Windows Media Player



Fernando Meirelles, Director

A great movie has recently been released in Brazil: "City of God" (Cidade de Deus). inside a fiction, the movie shows a lot about real life of brazilian poor teens, inside a slum that really exists, City of God, inside Rio de Janeiro.


Movie runs on 20 years and growing of characters into the slum

The story covers almost 20 years on the City of God slum life, and is based on writings of a Paulo Lins along eight years, that has always lived there. Main character in "City of God" isn´t a person, but the place. The story and its characters are seen by the eyes of Buscapé, a poor 11 years old black kid, too scared to become an outlaw, but too smart to be content on an underpayed job. He admires his friend Cabeleira, that with its gang grows up on crime scale, becoming a great local drug dealer. But Buscapé discovers a new way to see life: the eyes or an artist, becoming a kind of photographer of local reality.

The movie envolved 110 kids, non-professional actors of many slums in Rio, trained by directors Fernando Meireles and Katia Lund along eight months. All these kids are now envolved on educative activities intending their envolvement with movie industry.

Main actor is Alexandre Ribeiro, as Buscapé. "I live in Ipanema, in Cantagalo (another Rio slum). I'm 18 years old and as before, I continue studying in high school. It was through the group I used to have classes in, "We in the Theater", that I learned about the "We from the Movies" project. We went. I, in comparison, even though living in Rio de Janeiro, where we have to get used to all this violence, I also have this dream of getting out of the favela and become a competent professional. I'm not as shy, nor as virgin as my character, but the dream is the same. There are lots of Buscapes out there in the world, lots of others, not just me, wanting to get out of the slums, the favelas. Anyway, the future belongs only to God, and I don't like to talk about it much because so many things can happen, but I can now say that my life, practically began again after this film. It sure meant a lot to me. I've learnt things I never dreamed of learning."


Buscapé: too scared to become an outlaw,
but too smart to be content on an underpayed job

Co-director, Katia Lund, speaks about the way used to get the incredible work of these kids: "The acting approach was based on improvisation. We wanted to avoid theatrical and traditional "acting" techniques. We worked on all of the actor's scenes, but never gave them scripts to memorize. We would give them the idea of a situation and each boy's intentions in that situation, and see what they would come up with. They were free to create their own words and actions. We had a camera around at all times so that the boys would forget about it eventually. We wanted them to live the scene, freely and spontaneously."



Few books have captured so completely this state of affairs (the Brazilian apartheid and the outlawing of the favelas), as does Cidade de Deus, by Paulo Lins. Written by a son of the favela, Cidade de Deus reveals, for the first time, how this ever increasing process of incrimination has ended by overflowing into drug dealing enterprises and the struggle for power in the hillside shantytowns. As And one of says Filé, one of the movie characters: "- Listen man, I smoke, I snort... I've been begging on the street since I was just a baby. I've cleaned windshields at stop lights. I've polished shoes, I've robbed, I've killed... I ain't no kid, no way. I'm a real man…"


Portuguese edition of the book from Paulo Lins

"I am very happy that my book Cidade de Deus is reaching more and more people through this film as well as translations into Italian, French, Catalan, Swedish, Danish and in the near future, English. This will enable us to increase the debate on violence, misery, abandonment and education in Brazil.", says Paulo Lins, the writer.


The writer, Paulo Lins

More than technical aspects and bright of the book writing, "City of God" brings an universal view from poverty, as says its director, Fernando Meirelles: "City of God is not only about a Brazilian issue, but one that involves the whole world. About societies which develop on the outskirts of our civilized world. Of the opulence of the first world, a world that is no longer able to see the third or fourth world, on the other side, or deep down in the abyss."

Know more: http://www.cidadededeus.com.br/english/cidade_01.asp (in english)