RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL — Cidade de Deus ("City of God") is one of the most notorious favelas in Rio de Janeiro. It's also the most well-known, thanks to the 2002 film of the same name that won four Oscars for its depiction of the City of God as it once was: drug-ridden, lawless, and filled with an impossibly large number of guns.
But as I discovered during a recent visit to the City of God, the housing project has changed for the better. It's still not the safest place in the world (I wouldn't have walked around with a giant camera around my neck if I hadn't been accompanied by a well-liked local), but Rio as a whole isn't all that safe either.
These days, the City of God is a tight-knit, working-class neighborhood — albeit one that most Rio residents have never set foot in — that's desperate to shed the reputation of the "City of God" movie.
Built in 1960 by the government, City of God was part of a larger attempt to move favelas (slums, essentially) from the center of Rio to the outskirts. As of 2000, it contained 38,000 people in an area of about half a square mile.
There are two thing that you notice immediately upon entering: narrow streets and lots of lime green buildings. Seriously, most of the buildings are green.
My first stop: the home of Carla Siecos, a local journalist who runs an online newspaper for the City of God community. "I want to show a different reality from the movie...to show the positive side of things" she tells me.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider