- As Seen on the SUNDANCE CHANNEL From the team behind the Academy Award®-nominated feature CITY OF GOD, including directors Fernando Meirelles (THE CONSTANT GARDNER) and K tia Lund comes the hit Brazilian television series CITY OF MEN, a comedy/drama about two teenage boys growing up in a dangerous Rio de Janeiro slum starring Darlan Cunha and Douglas Silva, featured in the motion picture tha
From the team behind the Academy Award®-nominated feature CITY OF GOD, including directors Fernando Meirelles (THE CONSTANT GARDNER) and Kátia Lund comes the hit Brazilian television series CITY OF MEN, a comedy/drama about two teenage boys growing up in a dangerous Rio de Janeiro slum starring Darlan Cunha and Douglas Silva, featured in the motion picture that inspired this series.
The CITY is a shantytown located in one of the many mountains of Rio de Jan! eiro. The MEN are two 13-year-old kids, Laranjinha and Acerola. This series brilliantly mixes humor and reality to explore life in the "favelas" and in particular the indomitable spirit of two best friends growing up in one of most volatile communities in the world.Brazilian TV series City of Men is a dazzling, propulsive, and fiery exploration of life in a chaotic Rio de Janeiro slum, seen through the eyes of Acerola (Douglas Silva) and Laranjinha (Darlan Cunha). These two boys prove to be amazingly charming tour guides to a world by turns terrifying and exhilarating. Using the jam-packed storytelling that made the movie City of God such a revelation, the first episode alone is a marvel, merging the history of Napoleon with a cutting analysis of drug lords and class structure in the poverty-ridden neighborhood. The other three episodes of the first series carry on this riveting approach, mingling social observation with rich, compelling characters. From the s! econd series on, the show becomes less overtly political and m! ore abou t Acerola and Laranjinha's passage from youth to adulthood (embracing, with humor and pathos, the adolescent boys' obsession with sex)--though every episode has some sly or startling observation about race, wealth, and gender. Each series is filmed a year after the previous one, so the boys literally grow before our eyes; it's impossible to watch and not feel deeply involved as Acerola woos a girl named Cristiane and ends up a way-too-young father, or as an innocent prank escalates into a life-and-death struggle. Some episodes teeter on the brink of silliness--one of the last ones has the boys engaging in absurd cross-dressing--but the briskness of the writing and the charisma of Silva and Cunha carry the show through. Add to this the dynamic musical score of Brazilian pop and samba, and you have essential viewing. World music has already found popularity in the U.S.; welcome to a masterpiece of world television. --Bret Fetzer
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