City of God: Show me the money

More than three million Brazilians have been to see 'City of God', a film about Rio's most notorious slum, and it has been reviewed by the country's new president. Yet, thanks to Miramax, it almost didn't get made. Geoffrey MacNab reports

The houses in the City of God, Rio's most notorious favela (or slum), are tiny. Often, eight or more people share a space barely big enough for a couple. It's swelteringly hot, certainly too hot to be indoors. That's why the kids rarely come home. Their parents – if they have them – are away working as doormen or housemaids in the homes of the rich in the other part of the city. Police cars are parked at the entrance to the slum area, vetting and harassing anyone who goes in or out. The drugs trade is rife. So is the violence. This slum wasteland, 6km from downtown Rio, was created in the early 1960s for the most cynical reason imaginable: to isolate the poor and remove them from view.

Welcome to the world described in Paulo Lins' Cidade de Deus, a novel based on real characters growing up in the favelas – as Lins himself did. "I had no experience of the favelas at all," declares Fernando Meirelles, who has co-directed a remarkable new movie based on Lins' book. "I thought I knew a little about them. But when I read Paulo's book, it shocked me. The difference is that every time we see the favelas, we see them from the outside – from news, from journalists. But Paulo was raised in the City of God, and took eight years writing this book. The book was really written from the inside – and it's shocking. When I read the book, I said, this is my country, I don't even know it."

Meirelles' film (co-directed with Katia Lund) is already a sensation in Brazil. Lula da Silva, the new leftist President who swept to power in October's elections, has voiced his admiration, and has even written a review of it (something it's hard to imagine Tony Blair doing for, say, a new Ken Loach film). Since its release in the early autumn, it has proved a storming success at the box office, attracting well over three million spectators – almost twice as many as went to Walter Salles's Golden Globe winner, Central Station. It has also garnered its share of tabloid headlines (not least because a reputed drug lord was arrested at a preview screening in August) while provoking long and agonised debate among the country's political élite.

The issues that the film touches on – the enormous gulf between rich and poor, the status of black citizens, the drug culture, unemployment, etc – have obvious relevance. Not that this is some self-righteous drama about Brazil's underclass. Flashy and exuberant, shot with handheld cameras, it's as brash and entertaining as any Hollywood gangster movie. The drug war that it builds up to is, Meirelles explains, "like a cocaine trip, very quick, a lot of information. It's really a mess. First you begin with this organised society, all those houses lined up, then you finish with this confusion. It's about losing control."

He and Lund scorn the sensationalistic films made by outsiders who, heavily guarded, set up their camera in the favelas, shoot for a few days, and then leave again. They were determined – as they put it – "to give a vision from the inside". That's why they worked with kids from the City of God for over six months before preproduction even began. "What we did was set up an acting school to create a pool of actors. We didn't create the expectation of a film. They didn't even know there was a project for a film until they had received an acting certificate after five months. We said, next year we'll be working on a project and we'll be contacting you to know who wants to participate. And when the film ended, we continued the group," recalls Lund.

The film-makers were determined not to repeat the mistakes of Hector Babenco's admired but deeply controversial Pixote (1980), whose "star" Fernando Ramos Da Silva, a young street kid from São Paolo, had been plucked from obscurity. A few years later, his dreams of an acting career stymied by his illiteracy, Ramos da Silva died a violent death at the hands of three military policemen. His murder, in 1987, caused much soul-searching in the Brazilian film industry – and prompted one director, José Joffily, to make a documentary, Who Killed Pixote?, attacking Babenco.

"Pixote is a model for many kinds of brilliant director, and of course Fernando is aware of it and has seen it. At one time, it was seen as an investigation into an alien world. Now, that world is very much impinging on the daily life of everybody," suggests the co-producer Donald Ranvaud.

Meirelles, a genial, seemingly carefree man in his mid-40s who has carved out a career as one of Brazil's most successful pop-promo and commercials directors, tells a story about his cast and crew. Several drug-dealers and their friends were helping out with shooting. An important sequence was about to be filmed on the beach. He invited two of the boys to come with them. At the end of the day's shooting, they came and hugged and thanked him and told him that it had been the best day of their lives, adding that it was the first time they had seen the sea. "They live 20km from the beach and this was the first time they had been there," the director says with disbelief. "They were 22 years old. They really live inside the favela. Their life is just a thing of, "who is going to attack me, who should I attack?".

The actors, he adds, all had very low self-esteem. "They feel they're nothing because they don't exist. They want to be recognised – and for people to know their problems and their options."

Even Leandro Firmino da Hora, who plays the extrovert and ultra-violent Little Ze, was strangely reticent about his own performance. "He's such a sweet guy. He's very kind. He talks slowly. He's very bright. He's totally different from the character he has created. He doesn't believe he was a good actor. I was always telling him, 'Leandro, you can be a professional', but he wouldn't believe me."

When film-makers from privileged backgrounds talk about their "empathy for the underclass", they risk sounding smug and condescending. There's no mistaking Meirelles' sincerity, though, when he suddenly declares: "It's weird to say, but this was the happiest period of my life." The exuberance of the film-making, he insists, simply reflected the reality of life inside the City of God. "The thing about colours and the happy way of shooting, well, actually, if you go to a favela, they know how to be happy, to enjoy themselves.

"You always hear about Brazilians being happy people, and that's true. Those guys really know how to entertain themselves. They don't have many expectations. They don't think, 'I'm going to make this film, and maybe two years later I'll be in Cannes' – it's the carpe diem thing."

Then again, Meirelles himself had doubts about the future of his movie. At one point, he recalls, he almost abandoned shooting after being left in the lurch by his US backers. "Miramax was supposed to get involved [before the film went into production]. They were supposed to send me a contract. So I began preproduction – but this contract never came. We were two weeks before shooting. If I had had to stop, it would have been a disaster."

No one seems quite sure why the Miramax money didn't come through. Whatever the case, as Meirelles revealed when City of God received its world premiere in Cannes, he was put in a very "uncomfortable" position. His only option was to risk financial catastrophe and to bank-roll the entire movie himself.

"When it was ready, I got a copy and went to New York and offered it to them [Miramax]," he says, gloating just a little. "I went to them, said 'Remember this, do you still want to buy it? Remember the price? Well, now it's different – I took the risk and this is the new price'."

To its credit, Miramax paid up. It is releasing City of God in the US in January, and will market it to the hilt, as is their wont (many expect the film to get an Oscar nomination). More importantly, from Meirelles' point of view, he has ensured that Rio de Janeiro will never again be able to ignore the City of God. "Those guys don't leave the slums. All this war happens inside. That's why I lived in Brazil for 45 years and I didn't know about it. This was not part of Rio de Janeiro's life. Now, I think it can be."

'City of God' is released on 3 Jan