Қалалық жастар: Рио фавеласының хикаясы

Brazilian television show

Cidade dos Homens (English title: City of Men) is a Brazilian television show created by Kátia Lund and Fernando Meirelles, the directors of the film City of God. The series was watched by 35 million viewers in Brazil and was released internationally on DVD shortly after the film. In 2007, a feature length film based on the series (produced by Fox and TV Globo) was released. It is often cited as a "spin off" of the film: City of God ; City of Men is a less violent and more light hearted affair with dramedy elements (the film adaptation is darker, sharing its roots of City of God). However, the two do share some common aspects: the directors, some of the actors, and the setting of the Brazilian favela with its background of gangsters and poverty. The show tells the stories of Luis Cláudio and Uólace, better known by their nicknames Acerola (Douglas Silva) and Laranjinha (Darlan Cunha), respectively, who are two best friends who live in a notorious Rio slum, in a community of drug dealers, hustlers, and teenagers struggling to fulfill their dreams.

A co production of Meirelles (through his studio, O2 Filmes) and Globo TV, the largest TV channel in Brazil, the show aired Fridays, at 11 p. m. (local Brazilian time: 3 UTC) for four seasons. Each season aired roughly one year after the previous one, and the characters, as it happens with the actors who portray them, are shown to age from one season to the next. As a result, the stories of each season reflect the struggles of poor kids from Rio de Janeiro in the appropriate age group: in Season 1, the characters are about 13 years old, that is, barely out of childhood and into adolescence; Season 4 (the final season) shows them age 17, on the verge of adulthood, and the evolution of their dilemmas. A movie with Laranjinha and Acerola turning 18 has now been released in Brazil and in the United States. Silva and Cunha starred in the 2000 short film Palace II, directed by Meirelles, a dry run for the film City of God. In the short, Silva played Larinjinha and Cunha played Acerola.

The dates listed below are the original air dates on Globo TV and original DVD releases in Brazil (except for the international DVD release).

In 2017 (10 years after the movie) a new series was aired, continuing the story about Laranjinha and Acerola, now fathers of their own sons: Davi (Luan Pessoa) and Clayton (Carlos Eduardo Jay), respectively. The boys have the same relationship as their fathers had when youngsters.

The first season follows the discovery of a fatal heart disease in Davi. The situation develops when Clayton steals money from a drug lord. Laranjinha wants to use the money to pay for his son's surgery, as Acelora fears retaliation from the drug dealers.

Laranjinha faces the return of his ex wife and mother of Davi. Poderosa (Roberta Rodrigues), who left the boy when he was still a baby, and now intends to do everything to see him again, despite the fathers disagreement. The second season has the return of João Vitor, now Davi and Clayton's teacher.

Cidade dos Homens received highly positive reviews from the American press upon release. On Metacritic, the first season of the show has a score of 87 out of 100 based on 7 professional reviews, indicating "[u]niversal acclaim". Tim Goodman, writing for San Francisco Chronicle, praised it for having "the kind of energy you don't get often on American television, and the realness of the shot on location scene really makes each episode feel like a minimovie." Whilst noting its stylistic similarities to City of God, Goodman wrote that "the series lacks the relentless violence of the film," even though "it's not without the same ominous sense of death." According to Charles McGrath of The New York Times, "[t]he closest American popular television has ever come to this kind of close up realism is probably the drug dealing scenes in "The Wire" on HBO, and even they seem a little tame and stagey compared with what takes place in Dona Marta." ""City of Men" is more than just a fictionalized documentary, though;" he continues, "it has real humor and sweetness, much of it derived from the interaction of Acerelo and Laranjinha, who are an inspired buddy pair." Slate's Troy Patterson wrote that it "smoothly toggles between working as a crime melodrama and a coming of age tale, as a harrowing piece of social commentary and a gentle bit of farce. It eludes genre categorization, but if one of the nihilistic children it depicts were to put his gun to my head, I’d say it was a situation comedy—one in which the situation is that life is both cheap and beautiful." Heather Havrilesky of Salon called it "[u]nlike anything else you've ever seen on TV." The Los Angeles Times Robert Lloyd took issue with the show's "occasional paroxysms of style or hammered home points" in an otherwise positive review where he praised the show for its "immense vitality and persuasive naturalism".