City of God is a masterpiece and has instantly become one of my favorite films of all time

I just watched it for the first time today and I'm left speechless at it. I'm going to try to sum up my emotions and thoughts down below (some spoilers ahead, if you haven't watched it get off reddit and do it now).Cidade De Deus is the Brazilian equivalent of The Wire. While the latter rawly portrayed the decadency of the life in the rotten American urban suburbs, Cidade De Deus encapsulates the life in Rio's slums, spanning two decades from the 60's to the 80's through the lenses of Rocket, a young inspiring photographer.Throughout the 2 hour runtime, the film touches on the inevitable cycle of revenge, the dooming nature of the hoodlum's life and the struggle to escape that world. The favela's underworld is like a jungle, only the most ruthless predators prevail. In that world however, there is still a choice to be made, Bené and Lil-Z are two sides of the same coin. While Bené uses his position of power to occasionally bring joy to his peers, Lil-Z inferiority complex (originated by being constantly picked on by Rocket's older brother) and his solitary nature makes him aggressive and radical, always in search of recognition and clout as the top dog in town. When his biggest rival gets shot and detained, he's pissed because he's in the front-page of the paper and Lil-Z is nowhere to be found in any of the pages.But the film makes across a point that not only the ill-mannered fall to this lifestyle. There's Knockout Ned, a good-meaning sport, who gets sucked in into this feud to avenge the unfair deaths of his family, and ultimately sucks in countless other lives to it, including one's kid that ends up bringing him down, who wanted to avenge his dad's death by no other than Knockout Ned's hands.Ultimately, the young group of kids who were pawned by both sides, and armed by Lil-Z, end up taking the crown from him, taking over just like he did in his younger years, thus prolonging the cyclical nature of the favelas.Has anyone else watched Cidade de Deus?If you have not, please take the word of this stranger and watch it during this quarantine. You won't regret it. via /r/movies https://ift.tt/2xWRw7V