In the face of mounting evidence of intensifying inequalities in most parts of the world, it is difficult to debate the urgency of global justice as an ethical demand. At the same time, the persistence of extreme poverty in many parts of the globe presents a challenge to the claim that the world will make good on this promise. This paper seeks to contribute to a critical literature on global justice through considering it in terms of an aesthetic rather than an ethic. Prof. Ruth Buchanan (Osgoode Hall Law School) will do so through a close examination of cinematic depictions of poverty such as those found in the films 'City of God' and 'Slumdog Millionaire'. What is the relation between the aesthetic and the ethical in these portrayals? What aesthetic pleasures and affective engagements do they incite? How might they speak both to the promise and the failure of global justice?