Neighboring Sounds

Kleber Mendonça Filho’s masterful debut feature is an unsettlingly incisive study of class and simmering urban unrest in contemporary Brazil that unfolds with the gripping, slow-burn tension of a thriller. On a quiet city block in the coastal city of Recife, ruled by an aging patriarch and his sons, a recent spate of petty crime has rattled the nerves of the well-to-do residents. When a mysterious security firm is brought in to watch over the neighborhood, it sparks the fears and anxieties of a divided society still haunted by its past.