The same is true of Cabeleira's (Shaggy) girlfriend in the opening section.

Angélica does go for gangster Bené over nice guy Buscapé, but not because she wants a bad boy - as gangsters in the film go, Bené's a relatively benign one, and Angélica asks him to give up the gangster lifestyle soon after they've gotten together. In the end, he realizes that he must leave as Cidade de Deus collapses completely and has become an all-out war zone. As the biggest gangster, Zé Pequeno, declares war against the other street gangs in the slum, Buscapé can't help but get involved as violence explodes on every street. The kids who grow up in the crime-ridden Cidade de Deus turn to gangs, and the gangs turn to drugs to make money. He wants to be a photographer when he grows up, and to move far away from the ever-worsening Cidade de Deus.

By The '70s, the children have become teenagers and the colony has become like the decaying shantytowns it was meant to replace.īuscapé (Rocket) grows up alongside teenage gang members but limits his law-breaking to petty theft and smoking weed.

A bleak but not horrible place, its people live on the edge of society: the kids growing up there engage in petty crime that grows ever more severe as the years go on. On the edge of Rio de Janeiro, in The '60s, a housing colony is built to replace the favela shantytowns and house the many refugees of flooding. A 2002 Brazilian crime film directed by Fernando Meirelles & Kátia Lund and written by Bráulio Mantovani.

Watch city of god 2002