“The first feature-length work by the great Manoel de Oliveira (Francisca, Doomed Love) was this deceptively simple look at children's games, based on a popular novel. Never sentimentalizing his players, Oliveira used the children as adult beings set against the realistic backgrounds of a grown-up world. With its non-professional cast, natural lighting, and open-ended narrative style, Aniki-Bobó anticipates many of the ‘advances' of the Italian Neorealists.
“‘Aniki-Bobó is, in fact, the magical phrase used in children's games to determine, without arguments, who will play cops and who will play robbers; it's really a formula through which one is allowed to enter the children's world, their green paradise, their naive loves, their untamed antagonisms. I may say that I had very precise intentions when I made Aniki-Bobó and, perhaps, even ambitious ones' (Manoel de Oliveira).” Richard Peña