Book review: slums on screen: world cinema and the planet of slums by Igor Krstić

Nearly one billion people reside in slums around the globe, but how has this reality been depicted on the cinema screen? In Slums on Screen: World Cinema and the Planet of Slums, Igor Krstić offers a polycentric, interdisciplinary approach to exploring how slums have been represented on film over the last 100 years, including such critical and commercial hits as Slumdog Millionaire and Cidade de Deus (City of God) as well as examples drawn from Bombay Cinema. While he would have welcomed further comment on film reception, Shannon Philip finds this a fascinating read that challenges a number of assumptions about our ‘planet of slums’.