Depicts a harrowing journey through a near-future world of decaying cities, murderous adolescents and nightmarish technologies of punishment and crime.

Silviu has only two weeks left before his release from a hostile juvenile detention center. But when his mother, who abandoned him long ago, returns to take his younger brother away--a brother Silviu raised like a son--those two weeks become an eternity. While his outcries for help fall on deaf ears, he is introduced to a beautiful social worker that he can only dream of being close to. Faced with a slew of conflicting emotions and wild with desperation,...

Built in the 1960s, Cidade de Deus (City of God) is a sprawling housing project built to keep the poor as far as possible from Rio's glamorous beaches and resorts. By the 1980s, it has degenerated into a war zone so dangerous that visitors from outside risk being shot to death on sight, a poisonous stew of poverty, drugs, and crime. "If you run away, they get you, and if you stay, they get you, too," says Rocket, who wants to be a photographer. Rocket's...