Megacities

Four enormous urban sprawls – Mumbai, New York, Moscow, and Mexico City – reveal their unseen sides to the camera of Michael Glawogger in this remarkable documentary where rough-edged cinematic poetry is interlaced with a directorial gaze that could be described as anthropologically expressionist. These immense cities offer up their inner recesses – rich with beauty but also filled with anguish – to the eyes of audiences; presenting, that is, people living on the margins, trying to survive by any means they can, licit or illicit. Seldom in its history has the film camera dived down into the dark and uncharted depths of the urban realm with such (often painful) realism, taking pariahs and the marginalized, scavengers, street urchins, and young gang members, sex workers, thieves, and scam artists as its guides to the “wild side” – that is, all those excluded by “sanctioned” reality; all those we choose not to see, even when they pass right by us. Megacities sees them reaffirm their visibility, and we cannot help but look.