the young people's professor

In spite of its exoticizing, overly romanticized depictions of black diasporic pain, nihilism, and despair, Fernando Mereilles' City of God has always been one of my favorite films. I remember first seeing the film in a small theater in Berkeley, California in the summer of 2002 during a summer research program I was doing at UC-Berkeley. Aesthetically, the film is compelling. Most will agree.

Mereilles, the director of City of God returns to the black favelas and the shanty-towns of Rio de Janeiro in City of Men, "a powerful account of two teenage boys who have been raised as lifelong friends in a dangerous culture dictated by violence and street gangs. As the two approach their eighteenth birthdays and find themselves on the opposite sides of an intense gang war, they are forced to confront a shocking, shared secret from their past."

The film is now playing here in New York City as a part of an exclusive engagement at the Angelika Film Center in Noho/Soho (I can never remember which is which nowadays). Learn more about City of Men by visiting the Angelika Film Center's website here or going to the film's actual website here.

I'll be going to see the film tomorrow, finally.