Pixote · reception & legacy

How Pixote has been received, argued over, and remembered.

The arc

An international sensation on release — New York and Los Angeles critics named it 1981's best foreign film, and it put Brazilian cinema back on the world map — it's since hardened into canon as the unflinching granddaddy of the street-kid film, the movie City of God gets measured against.

What's debated

The debate that never goes away: was casting real São Paulo street kids an act of radical authenticity or exploitation — did Babenco give them a voice, or borrow their lives and hand them back?

Its footprint

Its shadow falls over decades of cinema — City of God, Salaam Bombay! and virtually every 'kids surviving the streets' film owe it a debt — and the real-life fate of its young star, Fernando Ramos da Silva, killed by police in 1987, fused the film and reality into one of cinema's most haunting afterstories.

Where it stands

A world-cinema 'you have to see it once' — mentioned in the same breath as Los Olvidados and The 400 Blows, and the essential Brazilian film before City of God existed.