City of God
Action! If there’s one word associated with cinema, the tension of movie sets, and the focus of attention, it’s this one. Action is very often at the heart of popular cinema: Harold Lloyd hanging from the clock hands in Safety Last! (1923), Cary Grant threatened and strafed by a plane in North by Northwest (1959), Franka Potente gasping for air in Run Lola Run (1998)... Westerns, swashbuckler films, martial arts or adventure flicks, thrillers, all these genres rely on action—sometimes frenetic, sometimes meticulously measured.
From movies by Sergei Eisenstein to Gilles Carle, from John Ford to John Boorman and Werner Herzog, via Paul Verhoeven, Kathryn Bigelow, Park Chan-wook, Érik Canuel, and Nicolas Winding Refn, this series will take you through the full range of emotions, from laughter to thrills, from fear to satisfaction.
Rocket, a shy 11-year-old boy, lives in a working-class favela in Rio de Janeiro. Unlike Li'l Dice, a boy his age who dreams of becoming a major criminal, he is timid and hides behind his camera, hoping to become a journalist. Capture a glimmer of light in a dark and violent environment.
Fernando Meirelles
Fernando Meirelles is a Brazilian director. He gained recognition in 2002 with City of God, an aggressive and musical chronicle co-directed by Kátia Lund, about a poor neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro during the 1960s and 1970s. This film, often considered virtuoso, won the Grand Coral at Havana and received four Academy Award nominations. The director then decided to adapt famous texts across three continents: The Constant Gardener by John le Carré in Africa, Blindness by José Saramago in America, and La Ronde by Arthur Schnitzler in Europe, which became the film 360 (2012). In 2016, Meirelles was the artistic director of the opening ceremony of the Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games. In 2019, he directed a biographical film for Netflix, featuring Anthony Hopkins as Pope Benedict XVI and Jonathan Pryce as Pope Francis. Both were nominated for Academy Awards.
Kátia Lund
Kátia Lund is a Brazilian film director and screenwriter. Her most notable work was as co-director of the film City of God (2002). After she graduated, she landed jobs as an assistant director on many music videos, commercials and films. Having grown up in a middle-class family, she had little knowledge of the plight of those living in Rio de Janeiro's favelas. She opened her eyes when she was hired to work on a music video directed by Spike Lee in a favela. Then, she became determined to make films about the dwellers of these poor neighborhoods to help raise social consciousness in Brazil.
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