By Donna Bowater

In one of the ubiquitous street-side bars in the west of Rio de Janeiro, Leandro Firmino sits sipping water dressed in the shirt of his beloved Flamengo football team. In Cidade de Deus, the community where he grew up, he knows almost all who pass by and gives them a thumbs up or a wave.

He could be any of the million who live in the city’s favelas. But his famously haunting eyes are unmistakeable.

A decade after playing the terrifying drug lord Li’l Ze in the unexpected box-office success, City of God, he shows few other signs of the fame he achieved back then.

Sprawling poverty

The film, which begins in the 1960s and ends in the early 1980s, follows the lives of Li’l Ze and Rocket, a young photographer who chronicles the decline of Cidade de Deus, against a backdrop of drugs, criminal rivalry and…