BARKING dogs and a crying baby. Maids and housekeepers calling to each other through the air shaft of an apartment building. The echo of samba music on the radio and soccer matches on television. The faint murmur of the sea in the background, and in the foreground, the incessant clatter of construction: the pounding of hammers, the churning of cement mixers, the screeching of circular saws.

That is the soundtrack of daily life in Brazil’s big cities these days, the inevitable accompaniment of an economic boom. But that cacophony also served as inspiration for the director Kleber Mendonça Filho, who decided to give his first feature film, a winner of prizes at festivals in Europe and the United States, the enigmatic title “Neighboring Sounds.”

“We’re at a very curious moment right now in Brazil,” Mr. Mendonça said in an interview in New York this spring, where his film was shown as part of the New Directors/New Films series. “There’s a lot of money, which means building things. And to build things in most cases means demolishing other things, which in turn stimulates my generation of directors and artists to say something about all of that.”