City of Men

A spin-off of, not a sequel to, Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles’s teen gangster movie ‘City of God’, which in the meantime spawned a TV series. The same restless camera prowls through the same crime-ridden, deprived Rio favelas, but there is a small-screen soap opera feel to this ‘coming of age’ tale about two almost-18-year-old boys, Ace and Wallace: the former is a father before his time, the latter is searching for the dad he never knew.

Friends since childhood, the pair become embroiled in the gang violence that surrounds them; but it is a father-son secret from their past that threatens to tear them apart. More emotionally involving than Meirelles’s flashy, overrated original, director Paul Morelli’s low-key companion piece maintains a constant simmer without ever coming to the boil.