I have chosen Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund’s 2002 coming of age film, City of God for my textual analysis. This film follows two young boys growing up in the crime filled slums of Rio de Janeiro through the 60s to the 80s and the different paths that leads one to be an aspiring photographer and the other to be a notorious drug dealer within the slums. I have chosen the section of the film between 00:55:50 – 01:00:10 around halfway through the film which follows the runts of the slums as they hold up shops and are then confronted by Lil Ze as he forces steak’n’fries to kill one of the runts to prove himself to the gang. To analysis this section, I am focussing on mise-en-scene and editing and its representation and ideologies of gang culture at the time. I will also be discussing the social and historical context surrounding the film.