Fernando Meirelles: “The City of God literally changed my life!”

While this cult film, a sort of Goodfellas in the Favelas of Rio, is being released in new prints, we meet Lyon with its director.

In 2003 the doors to an unknown world suddenly opened on screens around the world. City of God by a certain Fernando Meirelles offers a free dive in the favelas of Rio with its faces, its traffic, its flowery language, its alleys, its electricity…

Presented in a Midnight Screening at the Cannes Film Festival in May of the previous year, the adventures of Tignasse, Petit Zé, Fusée and even Manu Tombeur, thrilled festival-goers ready to slump by proxy. It's flying everywhere, the camera can't stay still, the plots fit together even if they devour each other… We're closer to Born killers that Freed, yet assumed reference which oozes through every pore of an immersive voice-over.

December 2024. City of God is still there. Solid on its supports. It generated offspring via more or less official variations, but the matrix has not been equaled. It reappears in restored copies. As for its author, Fernando Meirelles, even if he has directed other films: The Constant Gardener (2005) or Blindness (2008), everything inevitably brings him back to the favela.

Last October, the 69-year-old Brazilian was invited to the Lyon Light Festival to present the restoration with a view to its national release. All in broken but lilting French. He thus re-unrolled the thread of events…

Your French is (almost) perfect….

Fernando Meirelles: I lived in Paris for a year at the age of 20 to study oceanography… I was a fan of Commander Cousteau. I quickly realized that what I liked about him was his films! I returned to Brazil to study architecture before finally doing cinema.

What did you know about the world of favelas before writing City of God ?

Honestly, not much. In Sao Paulo where I come from, there are also some of course but not as violent as those in Rio. I come from a privileged background, my father was a doctor… For me this world only existed through television reports which sought above all to make these places spectacular through their criminal dimension… This is the reading the book by Paulo Lins (published in 1997) which changed everything. It was a very detailed examination of the codes that govern the favela. I was hooked enough to buy the adaptation rights. The idea was therefore to enter the favela, to stay there, to breathe the air…

What remained of the book whose singularity was the profusion of characters?

Paulo Lins was born in what he calls City of God. Not all the stories he tells are fabrications. The documentary part is very large. Basically his story was centered on his own experience but during the writing, people from the favela came to him to tell their story. This is how the book became this mosaic of micro-stories made up of around sixty small chapters. The novel has nearly 280 different characters. So we had to refocus things. I still kept this idea of ​​a multiplicity of characters who come and go at all times and places in the frame.

Weren't you afraid of betraying this world that you don't know intimately, even if it meant aestheticizing it?

My desire was to stay as close as possible to reality, not to glamorize anything. My safeguard was the novel and therefore the voice of the narrator. It is Paulo Lins who allows us to enter the favela. We couldn't be more authentic. From the start, it was clear that we would not hire stars or professional actors but people from the favela. They were the ones who guided me and dictated the way I filmed. We first organized a large casting before carrying out a sort of workshop. The rehearsals helped flesh out the script. I let the actors improvise among themselves. My job was then to remove what seemed superfluous to me.

The dynamism of the story is conveyed by frenetic editing…

There were so many stories. The favela is a permanent proliferation. This had to be reflected through the staging. How to fit all these stories, these characters into just over two hours? Hence this impression of an ultra-stylized cinematographic language. My experience in advertising has taught me to get to the point…

Except that advertising is used to sell a product…

… Said like that, it may seem vulgar, but I wanted the spectators to “buy” this world that they do not know. They had to be seduced. This went through the narration, the side: “ I will tell you my story… » So immersion is immediate. Here everything is a matter of movement, of electricity.

City of God is very marked by its reference to Freed…

Scorsese's film is in fact based on the same narrative structure. One of the protagonists tells his story, what he saw and experienced. The codes of American gangsters are a bit the same as in the favelas. The other filmmaker who influenced me is Robert Altman for his way of portraying a multitude of characters… His scenarios are not based on a plot with a beginning and an end, but on a string of stories that unfold continue without necessarily moving towards a specific goal. It is a transposition of the breath of life. Finally, I must mention Iracema by Jorge Bodansky, a model of what has been called Cinema Nuovo. The film was filmed in 1974. It follows the journey of a prostitute and a trucker who cross the Amazon. When I saw this freedom in storytelling, I stopped studying architecture to go into cinema.

Who is Kátia Lund, credited as co-director of City of God ?

This is all the result of a misunderstanding. Kátia was Walter Salles' assistant on Central Brazil. Walter is one of the producers of City of God. He advised me to work with Kátia who had made a documentary with him on the favelas of Rio. So she knew the subject well and had a lot of contacts. I hired her for the casting. His work continued on set as a coach for the performers to prepare them just before takes. She did a wonderful job. When we were finalizing the film, Kátia asked me if she could be credited as co-director, which seemed a bit incongruous to me. I then found a trick so that the film remained signed with my name only but that the direction was partly co-signed. Unfortunately, the Cannes Film Festival presentation brochure mistakenly attributed the film to both of our names. From then on, there is no turning back. Kátia wanted to claim authorship of the film. A nightmare!

The film has become a real phenomenon: Cannes selection, Oscar nominations, documentaries on the making, series versions… How can we not remain prisoner of such an explosion?

It is obvious that we did not expect such success. City of God literally changed my life. As soon as I returned from the Cannes Film Festival, around sixty projects awaited me at my agent. I did hundreds of interviews, my name was circulated everywhere. I remember very well the five minutes that followed the press screening in Cannes… Suddenly, I felt an electricity around me. It was obviously double-edged, I knew that this gift was also a curse. I have made other feature films but I will forever remain the director who made City of God.

You recently produced a series for HBO around City of God…

My company co-produced it but I had no involvement in its design at all.

Your film has definitely changed the image of favelas around the world…

Before City of Godit's as if this world does not exist in the eyes of the world. The success logically encouraged film and television producers to take an interest in it. It was becoming commercially lucrative. However, when I proposed my project, everyone dissuaded me: “Stop Fernando, people don't care about favelas! » Funding was very difficult to find. City of God was filmed on a relatively modest budget. Then the “favela movie” became a vein, a genre in its own right. City of God pulled the trigger.

Brazil. The City of God. By Fernando Meirelles. With: Alexandre Rodrigues, Leandro Firmino da Hora, Seu Jorge…. Dist. Wild Bunch. Duration: 2h15 In theaters in restored prints on December 11 and in UGC Culte screenings this Thursday, December 5 (see the list of participating cinemas).