Official submission of Brazil to the Oscars 2014 best foreign language film category.
The film is set on the street where director Kleber Mendonça Filho used to live and one of the locations was his own apartment.
Kleber wrote the script for the film in 2008, for eight days. He said, "I wrote and left quickly. I couldn't stop writing because I myself wanted to know how things would develop, what was going to happen in the next pages, where I was going to go. It was very good, and extremely emotionally draining."
President Dilma Rousseff, on her Twitter account, said she was happy with the film's nomination for the Oscars, adding that it is "a beautiful film". The president also recommended O Som ao Redor to her followers, considering the film "a chronicle about Recife today".