I watch a lot of movies, both indie flicks and Hollywood big budget fantasies, so there’s not much that impresses me. “City of God”, or “Cidade de Deus” in Portuguese, is however an extraordinary motion picture.

The movie is a captivating story of how crime affects the poor population of Rio de Janeiro. In the almost alien landscape of the slums, the only thing that really matters is whether you live or die, morality and law are relics of a dead society, or actually relics of a society that never really existed. The place is run by boys. Not teenagers, but 10 year olds that carry real weapons and kill people with real bullets.

The narrative focuses on the parallel life stories of two boys called Rocket and Li’l Dice. While both boys grow up in the same violent and atrocious environment, each takes a different path as the years go by. Li’l Dice changes his name to Li’l Zé and becomes the most violent gangsters in the City of God. Rocket it’s passioned about photography and he soon finds himself chronicling the violence of his environment.

The movie starts with a bang, and the action never slows down. The events unfold quickly in a cinematic and emotional tour de force. After all, this is the only option for a such a thrilling tale of violence having the tagline “If you run you’re dead…if you stay, you’re dead again. Period.“. Using a stylized mixture of realism and surrealism Kátia Lund and Fernando Meirelles, the directors, manage to take you, as a viewer, on an disturbing ride through the social drama of poverty and violence.