Two decades of City of God: Fernando Meirelles in conversation

It’s a cel­e­bra­to­ry evening in Rio de Janeiro, as hun­dreds of young peo­ple dance, drink and par­ty on an open-air dance­floor. Ben­ny, ​“the coolest hood in the City of God”, is host­ing a farewell par­ty after decid­ing to leave the ghet­to and gang life behind with his new love. Every­one – the soul crew, the sam­ba crowd, the groovy crowd – is there. As he beck­ons aspir­ing pho­tog­ra­ph­er Rock­et to the DJ booth, he’s con­front­ed by his child­hood friend and busi­ness part­ner Lil Zé. Then flash­ing strobes inten­si­fy, gun­shots ring out, the dance­floor clears, and real­i­ty bites.

‘Benny’s Farewell’ is one of the most mem­o­rable chap­ters from 2003 clas­sic Brazil­ian movie City of God. The scene encap­su­lates much of what makes it a bril­liant film, and why it’s often referred to as a ​“mas­ter­piece”. There’s young peo­ple enjoy­ing the nascent dis­co move­ment of the ​‘70s, com­plex char­ac­ters act­ed with authen­tic­i­ty and author­i­ty by kids from the fave­las, and a stark reminder that in the City of God, vio­lence is always around the corner.

As one of the Brazil­ian film industry’s biggest glob­al suc­cess­es, City of God took mil­lions across the world into Rio’s under­bel­ly – high­light­ing police cor­rup­tion, gang vio­lence, and pover­ty faced by those liv­ing on the extrem­i­ties of its soci­ety in the 1970s. Based on Paulo Lins’s nov­el of the same name and inspired by real life events, it explores life and endem­ic crime in the Cidade de Deus – a neigh­bour­hood project on the west­side of Rio, cre­at­ed by the Gua­n­abara State gov­ern­ment to phys­i­cal­ly move the fave­las away from the city cen­tre and Rio’s beaches.

To cel­e­brate the icon­ic movie’s 21^st anniver­sary and its com­ing-of-age, City of God has been re-released in UK cin­e­mas from Feb­ru­ary 23. Huck caught up with the film’s direc­tor and cre­ator Fer­nan­do Meirelles to hear about its evolv­ing lega­cy, the growth of Brazil­ian cin­e­ma since, and how non-West­ern coun­tries are pro­duc­ing some of the most excit­ing movies right now.

Con­grat­u­la­tions on the film’s re-release. How does it make you feel when peo­ple describe City of God as ​“icon­ic”, or ​“a masterpiece”?

It’s a bit weird – I didn’t make the film for that. When I made the film it wasn’t sup­posed to be a hit. I financed it myself, with a low bud­get, unknown actors, a first-time crew, edi­tor, writ­ers and direc­tor. It was real­ly a bunch of friends – tal­ent­ed friends – and we were doing the film because we liked the story.

Do you think that doing it com­plete­ly inde­pen­dent­ly would be pos­si­ble in today’s film indus­try? Which is dom­i­nat­ed by stream­ing ser­vices like Netflix?

To be hon­est, I think that fund­ing your own film is the most stu­pid thing you can do. My chance of mak­ing the mon­ey back was real­ly min­i­mal. We were sup­posed to have some mon­ey com­ing in, but then it nev­er came and I decid­ed to finance it myself because we were so pas­sion­ate. Nowa­days it would be even worse, you real­ly have to go through plat­forms, like Net­flix and Ama­zon. They have real­ly smart peo­ple, but they send you pages and pages of notes for cast­ing, shoot­ing and when you cut the film, so you’re deal­ing with 10, 15, 20 dif­fer­ent opin­ions. It was much bet­ter when I could decide if I want­ed this actor or this line.

Hav­ing not expect­ed it to be such a big deal, did you feel any real world impact after the film was released? Did you think it woke any­thing up in people?

Well in the cin­e­ma world, a lot. In Brazil at that time you wouldn’t see films shot inside of fave­las, there were just a few exam­ples, and Brazil­ian soci­ety wouldn’t know what was hap­pen­ing with a big part of the pop­u­la­tion. So the film in some way revealed Brazil to Brazil­ians. Also City of God was a hit, and Brazil­ian cin­e­ma real­ly grew. At the time, City of God was the best per­form­ing film at the box office in 30 years, then two years lat­er was the third best-per­form­ing, and five years lat­er the eleventh. There was also a wave of films shot inside of fave­las, like 15 or 16 films straight after, and we includ­ed peo­ple from the fave­las in the film, and as a pop­u­la­tion of Brazil [in pop­u­lar media].

Of course, in the crime world, the film didn’t touch any­thing. Nowa­days fave­las look very dif­fer­ent to what we see in the film, they are con­trolled by mili­tias. Ex-police­men that were expelled [or retired] from the [force], they start­ed tak­ing con­trol of the fave­las and would promise to send the drug deal­ers away and bring order. But actu­al­ly they start­ed charg­ing peo­ple liv­ing in the fave­las for secu­ri­ty, elec­tric­i­ty and gas – they’re worse than the drug dealers.

Do you think that the move­ment of favela films went too far at all? And no longer high­lights the issues in fave­las, but instead exag­ger­ates them and projects an idea of fave­las that might not be true?

At first, as you say, most of the films about fave­las were about vio­lence, guns and drug deal­ers, but after a while there was too much. Now we see romance and come­dies, there’s a lot of films shot in fave­las that are not about vio­lence or drugs – so if you watch them from the 2000s until today you’ll see the kinds of char­ac­ters changing.

City of God also focused on the sto­ries specif­i­cal­ly on Black peo­ple in Brazil­ian cin­e­ma, who were very under­rep­re­sent­ed – are they still?

Yes and no, I think they need to be more rep­re­sent­ed, and we need more Black direc­tors. But com­pared to 20 years ago there has been a big, big change. Now there’s a lot of Black Brazil­ian stars, [espe­cial­ly] in soap operas and if you watch Brazil­ian com­mer­cials, most of them include Black peo­ple. Espe­cial­ly in the last eight years, it has been chang­ing real­ly fast.

Hav­ing a whole cast of ama­teur actors is part­ly what gives the film its authen­tic edge – can you talk about how you man­aged to find all these amaz­ing tal­ents and why you chose that route rather than tra­di­tion­al cast­ing methods?

We had a team of four or five peo­ple liv­ing in fave­las, and they would go through their com­mu­ni­ties in Rio and invite peo­ple to join work­shops on act­ing. We would offer [to pay] for the bus tick­et and sand­wich­es, for them to spend two hours going into the com­mu­ni­ties with a VHS cam­era. And every­one who was inter­est­ed would say some­thing like ​“I want to be an actor”, then I spent two weeks watch­ing those lit­tle videos and choos­ing the peo­ple who I thought were charis­mat­ic. Then we pre­pared them for four months, com­ing three times a week to the work­shop, and that’s how I chose my actors.

With these kids com­ing from much poor­er back­grounds, did you have any mea­sures in place to make sure that what you were doing wasn’t exploitative?

We were very clear from the start that if they were inter­est­ed in the work­shop, we’d pay for their lunch and their trans­port, and then they could go back to school in the after­noon. Then when I invit­ed the boys to take part in the film, they signed nor­mal con­tracts. Some peo­ple, when you talk to them today say, ​“ah, the film was such a suc­cess, but we didn’t make much mon­ey”, which is true but when we offered them the pay­check for the work, they were all very hap­py because that was a lot of money.

And I didn’t get any mon­ey from City of God [either] because I sold the rights ­– when I fin­ished the film I was broke, 10 years of my work was in that film. So, I went to Canal+ and Mira­max and sold it. I still don’t have the rights now.

If you were to make a film now that spoke to life on the mar­gins of Brazil­ian soci­ety, what would it focus on?

There’s two things to say here – we’re final­ly doing a TV series on City of God. The same actors we didn’t kill in the film are back and now liv­ing in the Cidade de Deus in a dif­fer­ent kind of soci­ety [and era]. It’s com­ing out next year, and we’ve start­ed shoot­ing the sec­ond sea­son already.

And anoth­er world I want to explore is the Ama­zon rain­for­est. My son is direct­ing a TV series in the north of Brazil where peo­ple live in boats and rivers. It’s an amaz­ing envi­ron­ment that I am explor­ing this year. The sto­ry is about the traf­fick­ing of girls, which hap­pens a lot, but this world looks like Venice in the Ama­zon – lit­tle avenues and streets with peo­ple liv­ing along the riv­er. It’s such a dif­fer­ent world that nobody knows, not even Brazilians.

Do you still think there’s appetite for films that have an ele­ment of activism to them, as there was for City of God when it came out in 2003?

I think so, yeah. At least from my point of view I’m inter­est­ed in see­ing dif­fer­ent voic­es. I’m a vot­er for the Oscars, and this year they sent us 56 inter­na­tion­al films, so I’m watch­ing films from places like Bhutan (The Monk and the Gun), Burk­i­na Faso (Sira), and Bangladesh with No Ground Beneath the Feet, which is the sto­ry of a dri­ver – there’s a flood in his coun­try­side house and it all takes place in a day of him div­ing. It’s very absurd what hap­pens, and it’s also very real.

I’ve watched Amer­i­can films like Oppen­heimer or Bar­bie, and I have no inter­est [in them]. I’m much more inter­est­ed in real life – you asked me why City of God was so well received, it’s because it’s a dif­fer­ent world. That’s what I like, you see the way they eat, they live, how they walk. It’s much more inter­est­ing than see­ing a plot in Los Ange­les or New York.

City of God is in UK cin­e­mas from Feb­ru­ary 23. The release is accom­pa­nied by a lim­it­ed edi­tion City of God Cap­sule skate col­lec­tion by Clown Skate­boards and AllCity.

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