City of God

Cidade de Deus is a housing project on the edge of Rio de Janeiro. Rocket, a shy boy who dreams of becoming a photographer, grows up there between the 1960s and the early 1980s, and he tells us the story of his neighbourhood: how small-time thieves became drug lords, how a little boy called Li'l Dice became the feared Li'l Zé, and how the favela turned into a war zone where children with guns ruled the streets. Rocket just wants to survive and take pictures.

Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund adapted Paulo Lins's novel, based on real events, and cast it almost entirely with young non-professionals from the favelas. The result is electrifying. The film is fast, colourful, funny and terrifying, with freeze frames, time jumps and stories inside stories, like a Brazilian Goodfellas. Yet it never feels like style for its own sake. Every trick serves the storytelling, and the energy makes the violence even more shocking.

It is one of the most influential films of the century, and it hasn't aged a day. Behind the excitement is a devastating picture of a state that abandoned its poorest citizens and of a cycle of violence passed from one generation of kids to the next. It received four Oscar nominations, including Best Director. Overwhelming, essential, a masterpiece.