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Miguel Vargas

Professor Pushpa Mirchandani

ENC 1101

January 22nd, 2024

What Goes on Behind Rio’s Biggest Favela

A Favela is a very unique type of informal squared patterned neighborhood located across

multiple points of Brazil, most specifically the urban areas. Favelas are commonly characterized

because of their high population and crime making it not an ideal place to stay at. Their

Populations are mostly composed of working-class individuals, a big part of whom are migrants

and descendants of slaves. The documentary is filmed around Rocinha, Rio’s biggest favela and

one of the biggest favelas in Brazil. Rocinha is home to around two hundred thousand Brazilians

and is heavily run by drug gangs that control the drug and narcotic operations inside the city,

money laundering among many others. The documentary was produced by “DW

Documentaries” a German YouTube channel that creates educational documentaries from

German broadcasters and international production companies that provide the public with

documentaries that contain information beyond the headlines. The channel has also expanded its

terrains by creating multiple channels in numerous languages racking up around an estimated

amount of 25 million subscribers across all their channels. The documentary “Brazil: Life in

Rio’s Biggest Favela” was published in December of last year (2023) and has obtained over

three hundred eighty thousand views in just over a month. This documentary is forty-two

minutes long and features the appearance of German reporter Mathias Ebert who worked
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together with his team to squeeze their experience throughout Rocinha into this piece of factual

film.

Throughout the documentary, many aspects of Rocinha are displayed for the viewer to portray

the full picture and create a three-sixty environment in its head to understand what is going down

in one of Rio’s biggest favelas. The documentary was filmed and edited so that every inch of

Rocinha is captured, from the people receiving prayers in the morning, to how people work to

sustain their families and homes, and also the drug gangs that are throughout the city have

pushed the police out of it. Its purpose was to clear out many assumptions that had been made

about the famous favelas and to explain what is it like to live under a roof in a favela, how

people survive, the drug operations, and the opportunities people coming out of the favelas have.

The documentary has many arguments that are trying to be addressed yet one of them stands out

more than the others. That is, what is the life of someone who calls Rocinha its home, because of

that, it provides us an inside look at multiple citizens throughout it. The documentary features all

of the three rhetorical strategies. It contains the usage of ethos, thanks to the fact that the reporter

is not only talking about said problems but is also experiencing them which provides the speaker

credibility that backs up his claims. Aside from that the reporter can also be seen and heard with

a really solid tone and style that leads the viewer to assume what he's talking about. Some of the

illustrations of ethos in this film would be the first person point of view, not much in a literal

way, but speaking wise, the reporter is expressing everything that going through his mind

throughout the documentary. Another clear example of ethos is when the reporter interviews a

gang member inside his own home and provides aspects of its process of recruitment, what it's

like to work with a gang, and more especially why he decided to join it in the first place. While

ethos is a really solid part of the documentary, pathos also creates a distinguished impact on the
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viewer. Throughout the video the viewer can experience many cases where it creates emotional

impact trying to create a sort of emotional narrative. Pathos can be identified when the

documentary shows the inside of the houses in Rocinha and provides an example of citizens

living their normal lives, working, and even the experiences of the children who attend public

schools funded by the government that are not up-to-date and qualified to today's standards and

are not a pleasant experience for them to go through. Aside from the usage of ethos and pathos,

the usage of logos is very much more pronounced throughout the documentary. Facts, cause and

effect and expert testimonies are some of the many examples of logos in this film. These are used

to provide effective evidence to the public and lead the viewer to logical reasoning. Although

individual usage of rhetorical strategies can be found in the documentary, it is ideal to claim that

they can be seen working together and some of them even depend on the other rhetorical strategy

to express their ideas as much as possible. One of the many examples provided is the fact that

without effective evidence the credibility of the speaker, in this case, the reporter, can be affected

leading it to be less believable or weakened. The working of the three rhetorical strategies can

also be spotted throughout the documentary when the reporter joins a gang member behind the

walls of his own home. The reporter interviews the gang member and creates the perfect example

of logos, pathos, and ethos working together. Logos can be identified as clear evidence, pathos

can be presented thanks to the usage of imagery and filming every inch of Rocinha and finally,

ethos is represented mostly by the reporter and the situation he gets involved in.

This documentary was created to aim towards the public of people around the late twenties to

late forty since it provides the viewer with the truth of what it's like to live in the favelas.

Because of the targeting of this type of audience, it creates a larger opportunity for the

documentary to create an attachment between the viewers since the people around these ages are
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more worried about international issues and their levels of concern are higher than others. Even

though the documentary is not targeted toward all ages, it has received good reviews from many

of its viewers in the comment section on YouTube many even expressing their personal

experiences inside them and confirming some of the facts that are mentioned on the video. Its

ability to stick with its viewers makes it an example of excellent execution of a documentary

discussing multiple topics and diving deep into the heart of Rocinha. With that being said,

“Brazil: Life in Rio’s Biggest Favela” is a much more complex topic than it seems. The

documentary is one of a kind it's not another of those cheap documentaries that can be found

across the platform. Many people in the comments have also commented that this documentary,

in particular, has a much better production, cinematography, and storytelling than those found

across streaming services with a paid subscription compared to YouTube which is completely

free to the public. The documentary has received a decent amount of views but that number

doesn’t truly express the magic behind this piece of film. The documentary is not overly

complicated because of its smart ways of using rhetorical strategies that help maintain the viewer

and also help to reach the objected target audience and express what it is like to live inside a

favela to every single one of its viewers.