Black Orpheus (Portuguese: Orfeu Negro [ɔɾˈfew ˈneɣɾu]) is a 1959 romantic tragedy[2][3][4][5] film directed by French filmmaker Marcel Camus and starring Marpessa Dawn and Breno Mello.

[6] Lengthy passages of filming took place in the Morro da Babilônia, a favela in the Leme neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro.

New to the city, she rides to the end of the line, where Orfeu introduces her to the station guard, Hermes, who gives her directions to the home of her cousin Serafina.

When Serafina's sailor boyfriend Chico shows up, Orfeu offers to let Eurydice sleep in his home, while he takes the hammock outside.

He retrieves Eurydice's body from the city morgue and carries her in his arms across town and up the hill toward his home, where his shack is burning.

"[20] Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 81 out of 100, based on 8 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".

[12][22] Vinicius de Moraes, author of the 1956 play Orfeu da Conceição upon which the film was based, was outraged and left the theater in the middle of the screening.

[12][23] Critics of the adaptation by Marcel Camus argued that it reinforced various stereotypes about Brazilian culture and society and about Afro-Brazilians specifically, portraying the characters as "simple-minded, overtly sexual, and interested only in singing and dancing.

[25] Black Orpheus was cited by artist Jean-Michel Basquiat as one of his early musical influences,[26] while Barack Obama notes in his memoir Dreams from My Father (1995) that it was his mother's favorite film.

[27][28] Obama, however, did not share his mother's preferences upon first watching the film during his first years at Columbia University: "I suddenly realized that the depiction of the childlike blacks I was now seeing on the screen, the reverse image of Conrad's dark savages, was what my mother had carried with her to Hawaii all those years before, a reflection of the simple fantasies that had been forbidden to a white, middle-class girl from Kansas, the promise of another life: warm, sensual, exotic, different.

As a child, filmmaker Bong Joon-ho watched the film on Korean television and it made a big impact on him.

[30] Arcade Fire's fourth studio album Reflektor (2013) featured themes linked and inspired by the film.