La Haine and City of God

How significant are genre and narrative to your understanding of your focus films?

The focus films are ‘La Haine’ and ‘City of God’, both films can be compared with each over and the result is both similarities and differences between the films. For a start, La Haine is labelled as a social realist film and City of God is in the crime genre. La Haine is a realistic take from the side of the oppressed lower class citizens in France. The film is slightly stylised to show the location as dull, the whole film is shot in black and white. The film is also shot on location of the real life French projects and most of the cast in the film were genuine citizens of the projects, this adds a true sense of realism into the film. On the other hand, City of God shows a completely stylised point of view of the life of inhabitants of the Rio de Janero favela called ‘city of god’