Playback: City of God (Cidade de Deus)

Curated for Playback: The Brooklyn Watch Party by Equal Justice Initiative founder and executive director Bryan Stevenson, Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund's Academy Award-nominated City of God (2002) is an epic tale following two young men during the rise of organized crime in Rio de Janeiro from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. The screening will be followed by a talkback with Bryan Stevenson and guests to be announced.

Bryan Stevenson is a lawyer, social justice advocate, and founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, where he has spent decades representing death row prisoners, the wrongly convicted, and children sentenced as adults. Stevenson has argued and won multiple cases at the US Supreme Court. He also led creation of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice and the Legacy Museum, which chronicle the legacy of slavery, lynching, and racial segregation, and the connection to mass incarceration and contemporary issues of racial bias. Stevenson is the author of the New York Times bestseller Just Mercy, which was named by Time Magazine as one of the 10 Best Books of Nonfiction for 2014 and was adapted as a major motion picture.