City of God
Where the DNA of City of God travels
Films that shaped it
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City of God is the most internationally visible Brazilian film since Cinema Novo, and it carries that tradition's political commitment alongside its kinetic energy. Glauber Rocha's Cinema Novo manifesto demanded films about Brazilian poverty made with Brazilian aesthetic energy. Meirelles answered that call four decades later. But the direct ancestor is Pixote, Héctor Babenco's 1980 film about street children in São Paulo, which is rawer, more devastating, and less widely seen. Pixote is on MUBI.
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City of God is the most internationally visible Brazilian film since Cinema Novo, and it carries that tradition's political commitment alongside its kinetic energy. Glauber Rocha's Cinema Novo manifesto demanded films about Brazilian poverty made with Brazilian aesthetic energy. Meirelles answered that call four decades later. But the direct ancestor is Pixote, Héctor Babenco's 1980 film about street children in São Paulo, which is rawer, more devastating, and less widely seen. Pixote is on MUBI.
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Black God White Devil Atlas note
City of God is the most internationally visible Brazilian film since Cinema Novo, and it carries that tradition's political commitment alongside its kinetic energy. Glauber Rocha's Cinema Novo manifesto demanded films about Brazilian poverty made with Brazilian aesthetic energy. Meirelles answered that call four decades later. But the direct ancestor is Pixote, Héctor Babenco's 1980 film about street children in São Paulo, which is rawer, more devastating, and less widely seen. Pixote is on MUBI.
Films it shaped
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There's that scene in Children of Men where he gets into the car and it's all one shot. It's fantastic. I went and watched it, and then I kept looking for a cut, and there isn't one. And I thought, 'Oh my God, you can do that!'
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As a reference, 'City of God' was also key... We shot in some real settings... with a very active camera, very dynamic editing, very strong editing... We were looking for a way of portraying the chaos.
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I think in a movie like 'City of God', which is one of my favorite movies, the editing is so frenetic and propulsive, and there’s a way in which the camera work and the cutting is so intertwined with the characters’ emotions.
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I actually had a whole heap of films [influencing 'Lion']. City of God, Slumdog Millionaire... I kind of watched all those films that had that street sense.
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I guess movies like 'City of God', 'Pulp Fiction', 'Goodfellas'... films that have a propulsive energy.
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Black Panther Atlas note
Ryan Coogler has said he spent months studying the work of Ousmane Sembène, the Senegalese filmmaker who spent his career insisting African stories deserved their own visual language rather than a borrowed European one, before designing Wakanda's aesthetic. Sembène made his first film in 1963. He called himself the father of African cinema. Black Girl and Touki Bouki, Djibril Diop Mambéty's visionary 1973 film, are the real Wakanda.
