2 movies to understand the reality of Favelas in Brasil

If you ever wanted to understand the life of people living in Favelas in this
"Tropical country" called Brazil, I highly advise you to see "Tropa de Elite". This movie is based on real fact, more precisely on the visit of our friend the Pope in 1997 to Rio de Janeiro. Basically, the government of the city of Rio decided to "clean" a Favela located nearby the place the Pope wanted to stay during his visit of the city. Half documentary, half movie, the film explains precisely what is going on in those "town of non-right" where drug dealers seems to be more powerful then a police that have ridiculous equipments to fight. Highly violent, this movie is not recommended to sensible soul. For more info: Tropa De Elite, the trailer. An English version of the movie called Elite Squad is available, but if you really want to feel the real ambiance, I recommend the original version with subtitle English or Spanish.

Second good movie about the reality of the Favelas is "Cidade de Deus". If Quentin Tarantino invented a new style in 1994 with Pulp Fiction, the director Fernando Meirelles perfected it with this movie in 2002. The city of god was a housing project build in the 60's near Rio De Janeiro. This time, no Elite Squad or SWAT like policeman, but the true story of young people that became the biggest drug dealers during the 80's/90's. The story examines the life of many characters having different dreams or life style but all of them had to cope with the reality of life in the Favelas. If "Tropa de Elite" is a violent movie, there is nothing you can’t really expect as I guess we all have the habit of the violence trough American movie. However in "Cidade de Deus", the violence is rough without any compromise where children kill each other with cold blood.

To conclude, the reality here in Argentina can be seen by Europeans as hard but obviously Argentina and its "Villa" (it like this we call Favelas in AR) is now for me something more "acceptable". I am not aware for the moment of the reality in other Latino's countries, but I guess there is nothing to compare with the Favela life's some human being have to experience.