ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the nexus of contemporary Brazilian cinema and Sao Paulo, taking into consideration socio-economic and political issues related to class-specific, gendered, and racialized social spaces that have shaped Sao Paulo and Brazil at large. Os Inquilinos is a cutting critique on the socio-spatial order. The film is set in a peripheral area of Sao Paulo, offering only a glance from a distance of the central and better equipped area of the city. Through composition, framing and camera movement as well as the mise-en-scene, the film builds a sense of social entrapment in order to critique larger class, gender, and race related issues. Nonetheless, when someone from a better off socio-spatial reality looks at these two places, that is, the main characters neighborhood vila imperial and the favela, they both might be qualified as the latter, reinforcing the idea that periphery and poverty equals urban violence.
