ABOUT THE PROJECT

With football in the air and every Brazil match a national holiday, Favela World Cup will look at life in a Rio slum over the one-month period of the world cup finals. For the duration of the tournament, 10 local residents will become filmmakers, using the latest FLIP HDV camcorders to explore their lives and take us on a journey to places no outsider could go, giving the audience an insight into a world rarely seen.

Two British filmmakers will be living with the community and documenting life from their perspective. As well as this, actual television footage of the finals will be combined with the documentary to give that sense of “where were you when Kaka scored the winning goal…?”

The sense of community and the love for football is rarely so strong as when the national side plays. This film will explore how people identify with their social situation in the face of so much adversity and how – or if – one tournament can impact on people’s lives.

With the multiple-camera option, the film will cut to various different locations all at the same time. So, when Brazil are playing Portugal in their potentially crucial group game, the audience will be able to see a variety of people from all over the favela – the euphoria when a goal is scored, the misery of a loss, the anxiety as the final whistle is approaching.

But as each game ends, life goes on.

The people continue to struggle through hard times in a place where drug-traffickers and police are at war and the majority live in poverty. Between matches, the British filmmakers and the newly formed local film crew – boys and girls, men and women, old and young – will carry on documenting life of the underrepresented people who make up the majority of Brazil.