RIO DE JANEIRO — Julia Mariano says the night of June 20, 2013, was like being in "an American action movie."

An estimated 1 million protesters filled Brazilian streets, including 300,000 in her native Rio de Janeiro, to demand better public services and protest the massive costs of mega-events such as the 2014 World Cup in the face of Brazil's widespread poverty and corruption. The scene turned violent. Police fired tear gas canisters and rubber bullets into the crowds, hitting destructive and non-destructive demonstrators alike. Protesters bled. In São Paulo, at least one died.

In Rio, Mariano and her compatriots tried to flee the violence.

"It felt like we were being chased," Mariano, a documentarian, activist and freelance producer, recalls recently in this glamorous-yet-gritty capital of the World Cup. "You're running away from the police down different streets. You go down one street and you see the police coming. Then you go down another street and you see the police coming there."

Finally, they reached a collective art space near the city's Lapa district. They'd held meetings there before — but on that night, she says, "it was like a bunker." Outside, helicopters buzzed overhead. Tear gas canisters exploded against buildings. She heard screams and yells.

"At one point we looked at each other and said, 'We're in a fucking war,'" she remembers. "My flatmate called me and said, 'Don't come home because everything is closed and you won't get home safe.' I was like, 'OK, this is something crazy, but it's happening.'"

Protesters run from the clouds of tear gas during an anti-government protest in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Thursday, June 20, 2013. Image: Victor R. Caivano/Associated Press

Last Thursday night, Mariano and about three dozen other arts-minded activists in their 20s and 30s gather again at the same collective art space (they've asked me not to share its name or exact location, because others use it for non-political purposes). They meet here weekly to discuss actions in protest of the World Cup and Rio's next mega-event, the 2016 Summer Olympics.

On this night, Mariano tells me the violent, chaotic events of June 20, 2013, served as "the glue" that bound their group together in a more committed way than they'd ever expected.

They call themselves the Atelier de Dissidências Criativas, which roughly translates to "The Workshop of Creative Dissent." By design, they have no clear leader, and they're just one of many groups with similar general missions. Rather than through violence and destruction, they aim to change the mainstream World Cup narrative through art, performance and celebration — but most of them don't condemn groups like the Black Bloc which, the same night we spoke, caused an estimated $1 million in damage in São Paulo.

Their goal isn't so much to change the current World Cup in any specific way; it's more to challenge — and, ideally, impact — the mainstream narrative surrounding the tournament, shifting its focus to the event's human costs and larger political context. To the billions spent on stadiums that won't be used again and the millions living in abject poverty.

Stencil outlines and paintings decorate the walls of the dimly lit space. A winter rain pounds outside. Bikes and half-finished sculptures sit in some corners. In a side room, people print shirts with anti-FIFA slogans.

David Esteban Villa Toro, 25, makes an anti-FIFA T-shirt in Rio de Janeiro on June 19, 2014. Image: Mashable/Sam Laird

The meeting offers a window into both the amorphous nature of the homegrown movement against Brazil's mega-events, as well as a look at the protest actions that don't get mainstream press coverage. It also sheds light on the challenges activists face in making their messages heard.

"Most of the kids in the Black Bloc, I know them too," one of the more vocal people at the meeting says of the overall protest movement, after agreeing to speak on the condition of anonymity. "It's not that they're separate, but they would be planning their own thing somewhere else right now," she says, emphasizing the loosely defined nature of the opposition.

That lack of cohesiveness isn't unique to this country's movement. But Larissa Bery, an activist and master's student at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, says it does have some distinctly Brazilian characteristics. She says this both helps and hinders the various groups' shared goals.

"Brazil lacks organization and lacks structure or planning a lot of the time, but it's also a very spontaneous place," she tells me after the Thursday meeting. "You can set an action the day before and it will be very successful with almost no planning at all. But you can also have another action that you are planning for months and nobody shows up."

Sometimes, however, the most popular statements happen almost by accident. Just ask Paulo Ito.

Ito's mural of a crying child holding a knife and fork while staring at a soccer ball on a plate went viral in May. The powerful image was picked up by news outlets across the world. But Ito says he "was really surprised" when that happened.

He also says artists and activists have a new tool at their disposal, one that helped his mural become a global phenomenon despite being painted in an uncrowded area.

"I am sure that without the Internet only a few persons would know it," he tells me in an email.

For part of the World Cup's group stage last week, the singer Rihanna used Ito's painting as her Twitter avatar while posting often about the tournament to her 35 million followers.

Artists and activists gather in Rio de Janeiro to plan protest actions against the World Cup on June 19, 2014. Image: Mashable/Sam Laird

At Thursday's four-hour meeting near Lapa, the Atelier de Dissidências Criativas members discuss plans, what they've noticed working, what they've noticed not working and how they can build more awareness of the context of this World Cup and its massive costs.

The police are a problem, most agree, cracking down and blocking actions with overbearing enthusiasm. Another issue: It's too hard to get close to the Maracana, the stadium hosting matches in Rio, without a match ticket.

Several meeting attendees say people at the FIFA Fan Fest, a massive open-air party that broadcasts games on Copacabana Beach in the World Cup's tourist epicenter, seem receptive to their messages. But — after a quick laugh, thumbs-up or yell of approval to non-destructive shows of protest — they seem more occupied with alcohol, flirting and partying.

What's needed, the group agrees, is a party of their own, with dancing, music and art. A "Fuck FIFA Fest," to bring the revelers in and engage them with a different kind of message. Or maybe, some say, they should call it "FIFA Fuck Fest." And exactly where it should be held isn't quite clear. But at least one thing is agreed upon: The acronym will be "FFF."

Indeed, walking around Rio, you see anti-World Cup messages plainly and frequently — but it's a festive vibe that dominates the air.

After the violence of last June, speculation ran rampant about what might happen at this summer's World Cup. Would millions of protesters take to the streets again? Would the legacy of the 2014 World Cup be not one of soccer, but one of protest and controversy?

So far, this hasn't happened. When I ask why at Friday's meeting, attendees offer a similar explanation: Citizens are scared of Brazil's military police who cracked down last summer.

"I think before June 20, people used to think police would only catch the ones who were vandalizing and police were only bad with the bad guys," Bery says. "But after that they realized a lot of police have a modus operandi of violence and it doesn't matter who you are or what you're doing if they get that order."

"Welcome to the Olympic and World Cup disgraced city of Rio de Janeiro," reads a T-shirt in a collective art space in that city on June 19, 2014. Image: Mashable/Sam Laird

Mariano, the activist who compared that night to an American action movie, agrees. But she also gives another explanation: The movement in Brazil is bigger than the World Cup and tied to others worldwide — but it's also inhibited by a global fascination with Earth's most popular event.

"I think we're having a worldwide representative crisis, and we have people who are trying to question that in different ways," she says at the Thursday night gathering near Lapa. "It's not only here — we have contacts in Turkey and Egypt and other parts of the world that are feeling the same things we're feeling here.

"But you ask why people are more interested in the World Cup? It's the fucking World Cup. You can't do much about that."

But still, every week, they gather here to try.