Voy Pictures Wins @ NYILFF.

VOY Pictures’ film debut, Favela Rising, was awarded “Best Documentary’ at the New York International Latino Film Festival last night, marking the third film festival award it has garnered since its debut in April of this year.

Recently, Favela Rising won its filmmakers, Jeff Zimbalist and Matt Mochary the much-coveted “Emerging Documentary Filmmaker Award” at the Tribeca Film Festival in April and the award for “Best Documentary” at Honolulu’s Cinema Paradise Film Festival in June.

More than 70 films, documentaries and short films were shown during the week-long New York International Latino Film Festival, its sixth, which ended on Saturday night. The festival was presented by HBO.

Favela Rising is the electrifying story of a man and a movement, a city deeply divided and a vision for a community finally united. Haunted by the murders of his family and many of his friends, the film follows Anderson Sá, a favela (slum) resident who turns social revolutionary in Rio de Janeiro’s most feared slum, the favela Vigário Geral. Sá inspires his fellow citizens with a new vision for a better life. AfroReggae, the grassroots cultural movement founded by Sá and fellow activist José Junior to connect and inspire people through music and dance, combines the sounds of hip-hop, street rhythms, and Afro-Brazilian themes. Through the movement, Sá rallies his community to counteract the violent oppression enforced by teenage drug armies and sustained by corrupt police.

Zimbalist and Mochary traveled back and forth to Brazil for more than two years, living in the favela while they chronicled the rise of AfroReggae. After earning the trust and friendship of the soulful and prophetic Sá, they were permitted unprecedented access and shot astonishing footage of daily life in the slums. Zimbalist and Mochary also taught favela children to use digital video cameras so they would be confident and competent enough to document their own lives. In fact, several remarkable sequences in the film were captured by local favela youth. The resulting feature documentary is a gripping story of man’s ability to transcend violence, hunger and spiritual poverty.