The movie Cidade de Deus is one of the most famous Brazilian movies, nominated for four Oscars. It is a breathtaking story of life in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil between the years of the late 1960’s and early 1980’s. It is based on a novel of the same name written in 1997, and the move was released in 2002.
The film is committed to showing an authentic vision of grisly life in the favelas and seems to do so with much success. Only one actor in the entire film had previous acting experience, and the rest were recruited from the actual favelas and given a short training before they started filming.
Favelas, for a bit of background historical knowledge, are settlements that emerged in the late 1800’s as soldiers had come to Rio to fight but had absolutely nowhere to live so they built their own houses that grew to become entire communities on Providência hill, between the city center and the sea. The government gave these soldiers the right to do live there in this way, but as soon as many former African slaves moved in, the areas quickly became overcrowded, dirty, and suffered outbreaks of disease. These communities were largely abandoned by the government, meaning they had no governmental justice system, sanitation, electricity, water, etc. and were associated with intense squalor, crime, and poverty. At the same time, many wealthy white Europeans were moving in (at this time, Rio was the capital of Brazil) and wanted to live near the coast in the center of the city, close to where the favelas are, and the government began their first wave of attempts to vacate the favelas and relocate the people to make room for gentrification. Later on, another wave of people joined as Brazil saw a massive wave of urbanization in the early 1940’s and 1950’s. Leading up to then, many of the cities were succeeding in gentrifying: becoming wealthier, pushing out the lower classes, and as the wealth began to concentrate in the hands of the relatively few elite in urban areas and the majority of the population had become poor and rural, soon many people had to commute into the city to work where all the money was - often traveling several towns over. (Interestingly, this is the meaning behind the song “Trem das Onze/11 o’clock Train” by Adoniran Barbosa comes from, a song we listened to in Portuguese for Spanish Speakers with Professor Abreu, referring to the commuter lifestyle of many at the time.) With this second influx came another wave of attempts to remove the inhabitants out of the favelas during the reign of a militaristic government in the 1970’s.
One of these government housing relocation sites was the famous Cidade de Deus, which exists in real life (also interesting- Former President Obama visited the favela of Cidade de Deus in 2011). However, after relocating them, the government for the most part ceased investing in these government housing locations and they fell back into the same state of favela from which they had been removed. At this time, the drug trade was growing internationally and cocaine became a major element of the crime in the favelas, among accompanying arms trade and gang violence, which are the main elements of the movie.
Comments
This film sounds fascinating, but I'm not sure that I would want to watch it- it sounds a bit too grisly for my taste! I really appreciate how you provided a background information on the movie and favelas, which sounds more interesting to me than the drugs and crimes in the 20th century featured in the movie. It's really interesting that the film took real residents from favelas to be actors, and I wonder if they do this sort of thing frequently in Brazilian movies.