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.
