JGBrazil

Brazil's outrageously dramatic tele-novellas inspire this tale of marital infidelity, national betrayal, public scandal, long lost orphans and of course, forbidden love. When a reporter uncovers the truth behind a company's plans to mine in the interior of Brazil it sets in motion a complex tale. Ecological ruin could result if the primal forces of this passionate land are ignored.

A very good film made before the new wave of brazilian movies. You have to see it!!!

It seems it's war in the big favela (shantytown). The police start to go up the hill while a pirate radio station tells the population how to react. It's the radio that the police are looking for.

This is the start of a brazilian tale...

The Radio Favela appeared in years 80, in a favela of Belo Horizonte. With a courageous programming and a spontaneous language, it conquered a great number of listeners and reach beyond the imagination. UMA ONDA NO AR (A WAVE IN THE AIR) is fiction with a lot of reality. In the film, true facts are mixed with imaginary and the caracters are full of freedom.

This movie, together with CIDADE DE DEUS (CITY OF GOD) brings the problem in the brazilian favelas. But they share only the theme, CIDADE DE DEUS is a lot more powerfull with much blood and violence.

UMA ONDA NO AR brings a warm feeling of hope!!! The radio symbolize the freedom of speech. And the greatness of the humanity...

Brazilian reality has surpassed the majority of attempts to portrait it in fiction. The acceleration of social decomposition has transformed violence into a banality.

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.

Cidade de Deus, the film by Fernando Meirelles, is an extremely powerful transposition of Paulo Lins's book. With a tremendous impact, modern and visceral, the film counts almost exclusively on the acting abilities of youngsters coming from the favelas around Rio de Janeiro.

Meirelles and co-director Katia Lund worked with these kids for over six months, in a laboratory process comparable only to that undertaken by Hector Babenco while filming Pixote.

Orchestrated by a director with profound knowledge of cinematographic grammar, Cidade de Deus renews Brazilian filmmaking, and offers the spectators the possibility of understanding the roots of social chaos which characterize our country today a little better.

WALTER SALLES