How hard was it to adapt such a sprawling novel for the screen?
It was a big challenge. The book is about 600 pages and there are 250 characters but it has no real structure - it's very episodic. The author Paulo Lins, who was raised in the City of God slums, presents a character and you follow him for 20 pages. When he dies, you start following somebody else, and that carries on right until the end.
We decided to split the film into three parts, each different from the other. In the first part the romantic criminals come in and there's a warm atmosphere. In the second they have moved onto drug dealing, and the camera movements are free and relaxed. Towards the end, war breaks out between the dealers and the images are chaotic and out of focus.
Was it difficult to direct so many young non-professionals?
No, it was easy to work with them because they were so enthusiastic about doing the film. They liked being respected and for people to listen to them and to applaud them. We auditioned 2000 kids from poor areas and chose 200. We spent six months working on improvising scenes. They ended up creating about 70% of the dialogue. They were so keen that they used to arrive at work an hour before shooting started.
How was "City of God" received in Brazil given its controversial subject-matter?
It was a huge success in Brazil and attracted 3.4 million spectators. It was more popular than "Star Wars" and "Minority Report". It moved from the cultural pages to the political pages - one of the presidential candidates asked to see the film and talked about it in a speech. So teenage drug-dealing became an issue in the campaign.
How did you approach the violence that is an important aspect of the film?
I think the violence in the film is totally different to what you see in American movies from people like Tarantino. I tried to avoid graphic violence: we have only three sequences involving blood and in the rape sequence you don't see the rape. Even in the gang-war scene at the end, I had a voice-over talking about something else to distract the viewer. I used music throughout the film to create a distance from the action.
