I can still remember the first time I watched City of God and how it affected me- it's one of the most visually arresting films I have seen, and I find that it would take me more than just one sitting to fully absorb it. Fernando Meirelles showed us the real Brazil, much more than what a dozen textbooks and travel brochures can accomplish.

City of God features such memorable set of characters! I can still remember rooting for Rocket, as he realized his dream of becoming a photographer. I also remember with sadness the death of Benny, the coolest guy in the favela, and how I hate Lil'Z! The story is a big revelation. Not that I have no idea about crime and violence in Brazil, but its the way it was presented that made it even more absorbing. I was asking myself, perhaps there is another movie that can match its intensity and power?

And comes City of Men...

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From the producers of the award-winning phenomenon “City of God,” comes a new journey to the other side of paradise – a riveting, humor-filled yet emotionally power-packed tale from the gritty heart of Rio, where two teenaged best friends are about to battle the daunting odds against becoming men on the lawless outer streets of one of the world’s most volatile cities.

This is CITY OF MEN, a companion piece to Fernando Meirelles’ dazzling, Oscar®- nominated “City of God,” directed by Paulo Morelli, who has been Meirelles’ long-time collaborator. Meirelles’ groundbreaking tale brought audiences for the first time into the wildly frenetic energy, inky black comedy, hyperkinetic speed and gangster-style desperation that characterize the favela shantytowns of Rio; and, in the process, became its own utterly unique 21st century crime film and World Cinema classic.

With CITY OF MEN, Morelli takes an equally compelling but different approach. Still melding incisive humor with high-octane action, he uses intimacy and a deep humanity to probe further beneath the searing surfaces to the everyday realities of life in Rio. This new story follows just two young characters in the midst of a terrifying yet exhilarating coming-of-age struggle like no other – as they try to come to terms with adulthood, fatherhood and the idea of a future in a world where it’s tough enough just to survive each night. Serving as book-ends to one another, while “City of God” came straight from inside the raging chaos of the crime world, CITY OF MEN brings to the fore the story of the many young people attempting to carve out lives of real friendship, love and even hope in the midst of it.

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CITY OF MEN follows the rapidly changing fates of two best friends -- Acerola, AKA “Ace,” and Laranjinha, AKA “Wallace” – who have grown up together on Dead-End Hill and have always been as tight as brothers. But both are about to turn 18 and face a personal crossroads. While Ace becomes a father, trying to raise his toddler son when he’s barely more than a child himself, Wallace is drawn into a perilous search for his own long-lost, ex-convict father. Now, as a devastating secret from their past threatens to shatter their friendship, Ace and Wallace find themselves on the opposite sides of a raging gang war, facing one another – and themselves -- as they never have before.

A TALE OF TWO CITIES:

When Fernando Meirelles’ “City of God” became a global cinema hit in 2000, the film not only became a harbinger of a dynamic new storytelling style. It also opened many eyes to the dizzying, hypermodern world of Rio’s shantytowns -- sprawling, sun-drenched but crime-ridden areas that have sprung up, unplanned, on the steep hillsides and urban outskirts, housing as many as 1/3 of the city’s very poorest, yet most stunningly resourceful, citizens. Though teeming with rampant law-breaking and strife, it soon became clear that these pariah lands at the edges of the city were also filled with vibrant characters, hidden dreams and exhilarating stories never heard before.

The film went on to inspire an acclaimed international television series. More recently, Paulo Morelli, who had worked on the TV series, began collaborating in concert with Meirelles to develop a feature film that would explore life in the favelas from a fresh perspective. In a sense, Morelli wanted to reveal the favelas anew – from the opposite view from that which Meirelles had used in “City of God.” If “City of God” was about the heart-pounding extremes people will go to for survival, CITY OF MEN became about the inextinguishable yearning to maintain human kindness and decency amidst those extremes.

Explains Meirelles, who also directed the acclaimed thriller “The Constant Gardener” and serves as a producer on CITY OF MEN: “‘City of God’ was a story about organized drug dealing in the hillside communities in Rio de Janeiro. Drug dealers are the theme of the film, and, in the background, we see the communities learning how to deal with the new order. CITY OF MEN shows the other side. The film deals with the particularities of life in the favelas, while issues such as broken families and drug dealing lie in the background. It is a very emotional experience.”

Like “City of God,” the story was born out of the raw truth of favela life. While working on the television series, Morelli began making regular excursions into the favelas to talk with the locals and scout for original tales and intriguing urban adventures. He saw the grand diversity of life there, rife not just with drug warriors and hardened criminals but with wide-eyed kids, urban philosophers and driven entrepreneurs. He also began conversing with people about the most important issues and themes in their lives – and one of the biggest that kept coming up over and over was fatherhood. In the world of the favelas, many children are raised without a paternal parent and, as they grow up, begin to seek surrogate leadership and guidance from the most powerful, flashiest men in the community: the criminals and drug dealers who run the favelas -- men such as Midnight, the drug dealer who tries to take Ace under his wing in CITY OF MEN.

This, then, became a major thread winding its way through the narrative of CITY OF MEN. While Ace tries to break the cycle by becoming a rare single father to his infant son, Wallace tries to find his own long-lost father, who abandoned him long ago, which sets off events – and unearths a shattering secret -- that will nearly undo their bond of friendship forever. As it turns out, their own fathers’ lives were mirrors of their own, except that they resulted in a tragedy that still reverberates, and that Ace and Wallace now have a chance to prevent themselves from repeating.

“The lack of a father is a very common characteristic in favela culture,” explains Morelli. “Fathers abandon their kids. They have children with different women and don’t recognize them, don’t register them, just forget about them. The women are the ones who take care of the children in the favelas.. And I think this is one of the reasons drug dealing is so strong, because the drug dealer becomes a father figure to children. The kids look up to that powerful guy, who is seen holding a gun, flashing brand name sneakers and gold chains and having sex with all the girls in the favela. They want to be just like him, and this has become a very real social issue in Brazil.”

He continues: “So the story of this movie is the story of a real father being born. It is about Ace assuming his role as a father and Wallace freeing himself from the figure of a father he never knew. Besides the paternity issue, the story also revolves around the idea of coming-of-age under these circumstances. The movie is marked by two birthdays: on the first day, Ace turns 18. On the last, it is Wallaces’ turn. And the third theme that weaves through the story is friendship, a friendship of many years which will be challenged when Ace and Wallace take opposite sides in the gang war.”

Though the story is Brazilian in flavor and feel, the theme is one universal to urban
centers around the world, including the U.S. -- anywhere that young boys find themselves trying to understand what fatherhood and becoming an adult man means in a lawless world without any real guidance. For the filmmakers of CITY OF MEN, the subject was especially rich and moving because the film’s two lead actors, Douglas Silva and Darlan Cunha, also grew up in the favelas without dads.

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At times on the set, their own yearning and bittersweet feelings about fatherhood were awakened, adding something special and very true to the film’s drama. “It was a pretty emotional production,” notes Morelli, “because, in a way, these two young men were reenacting their own lives.” No matter how unflinching and harrowingly real the film gets, however, it is still bursting with life and – in contrast to the unsparing “City of God,” even a few glimmering slivers of hope.

Morelli admits that he did not shy away from infusing his film with a shot of honest but unmistakable optimism. He says: “In spite of the terror and aggression that surrounds them, Ace and Wallace have a good-humored will to live that is contagious. Their lives reveal that people can still be happy, can still lead rich lives, in the most horrific of human conditions.”

ABOUT THE TWO LEADS

Darlan Cunha (Wallace) was born in 1988, on the hillside favela of Mangueira, Rio de Janeiro. When he was nine he entered the acting workshop of the Palco Teatral NGO, founded by the actors/directors Ernesto Piccolo and Rogério Blat to train actors for free. Darlan was called to do screen tests in 2000 for “City of God,” and played the part of Laranjinha in the end-of-year special shown by Globo TV called “Palace 2,” directed by Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund, and was eventually given the role of “File com Fritas”, a young criminal who enacted one of the more dramatic scenes in “City of God” (2002). He also worked for four seasons on the “City of Men” TV series and the main character in the feature film “Meu Tio Matou um Cara” (2004) directed by Jorge Furtado. He is now part of Globo TV’s permanent cast.

Douglas Silva (Ace) was born in 1988, in Penha, Rio de Janeiro. He began studying drama at the age of ten at Professor Souza Carneiro School. In 2000, he was recommended by one of his teachers to participate in the workshop for the cast of “City of God.” He played the roles of the perverse Dadinho, who would later become the criminal Zé Pequeno in City of God (2002), and Acerola, for the end-of-year special “Palace 2” and the “City of Men” series respectively. The series, which lasted for four seasons, led him to be nominated for the regional Emmy award in 2005, the most important award granted by American TV in the category for Best Actor in a drama series. While currently participating in the Global TV series “Carga Pesada,” he is deciding whether he will go to either International Relations or Social Communications College.

[ Official Movie site ]

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