Katia Lund co-directed the explosive film City of God, now nominated for four Oscars. She tells Alex Bellos why she believes she should have been in line for one of them
Katia Lund was having breakfast at her flat in Rio with some of the young cast of City of God when the telephone rang. It was a journalist, breaking the news to her that City of God, which she co-directed, had been nominated for four Oscars, including best director for her colleague Fernando Meirelles.
The 37-year-old Brazilian did not know what to think. She was, of course, overjoyed that the film she had worked on was achieving the ultimate in mainstream international recognition. But she was also aware that her name was not going to be up in lights. She was not an Oscar co-nominee. She would be denied respect she thought she deserved. The issue of her co-direction credit, she admits, is "fairly confusing to everybody and not very well resolved".
Paralysed by mixed emotions, she refused to speak to journalists for a few hours as she formulated a response. "There are two ways to go. One, you fight for recognition," she reasons. "And I really don't think I will gain anything from that. It might happen down the road, but I just don't want to be fighting now. When I made the film, it was much more important to me to bring the issue [of urban violence] to debate because, in Brazil, no one was talking about these things." So Lund took the second option. "I have decided to be happy about the whole thing. What I have decided is that this is Brazil going to the World Cup and I'm not going to be the one who wrecks the party." City of God has been the most critically acclaimed Brazilian film in recent years, and is the country's greatest international success of all time. Based on a book by anthropologist Paulo Lins that fictionalised his academic research into the poverty-stricken Rio neighbourhood Cidade de Deus, the film shows how in the 1970s and 1980s armed drug gangs came to dominate the city's poor favela areas.
When the book was published, Sao Paulo commercials director Fernando Meirelles bought the film rights. Yet he had never set foot in a favela and set about trying to find out how he could. This brought him into contact with Lund, a film-maker specialising in Rio's most violent areas.
With orange hair, piercing blue eyes and a freckly European complexion, Lund stands out in any crowd of Brazilians. In fact, she is the middle daughter of two Americans who moved to Sao Paulo. She calls herself "bi-cultural" and explains that the feeling of being an outsider helped her empathise with favela communities.
Lund's first experience in a favela came in 1996, when Michael Jackson elected to film the video for They Don't Care About Us in Rio's Dona Marta favela. Lund was in charge of production. She met the drug bosses who controlled the area and became fascinated with their lives, hanging out with them, living in their world, and eventually co-directing the impressive favela documentary News from a Private War. She was also getting experience as assistant director in many Brazilian films including Walter Salles's Central Station.
Meirelles got Lund on board at the beginning, and agreed to her request to be guaranteed a credit as co-director. "When Fernando hired me, we were bringing our talents together," she says. Together they started Us from Cinema, a group of actors from poor backgrounds who would eventually take most of the roles. Lund worked closest with the actors while Meirelles was more concerned with storyline, locations, editing and images. But roles, even when clearly defined, always blur. Meirelles praises Lund for doing more than just working with the cast. She helped on the script and in developing the characters.
Lund lists what she did. "A year of preparation. Sitting on the set next to Fernando. Going to the edit. I was not there just to hold his hand. It puts me in a very awkward position. I worked on the script from the fourth to the 12th draft. I supervised the crew. I know I was there working with Fernando to construct the vision and style of this film. If I was not directing, what was I doing?" While the swish and stunning aesthetic was largely credited to Meirelles' experience as one of Brazil's top advertising directors, Lund believes that she had a strong influence too. "If anyone looks at my previous work, they can see it's very similar in style." When the film came out Lund was indeed credited as co-director, in a separate line. Meirelles was "director". One more senior than the other. Before the film was released, they went to Cannes and she already sensed that she was being treated by the press not as a director but as "the woman who took care of the kids and was the tour guide of the favela".
The Academy doesn't acknowledge the term "co-director". If Lund had joint credit, rather than a separate one then things might have been different. Moreover, the Academy's submission committee, which has looked into the issue, says they do not consider her duties to be that of a nominateable director.
This, she discovered, was why Harvey Weinstein, boss of City of God's US distributors Miramax, did not put her name up for the Oscar ballot paper.
She says she didn't question it because she was tired of the whole issue and because she thought that there was no point. What chance did a Portuguese-language film about urban violence have with the Academy's voters? When she talks there is no bitterness in her voice. She has spoken to Weinstein, who told her that her presence would be needed for publicity purposes at the Oscar ceremony. "I have been invited to go but I've not decided yet if I am going to."
After finishing City of God, Brazil's biggest channel, TV Globo, commissioned a four-part mini-series called City of Men that used the same actors and examined the same themes.
Lund directed two episodes and Meirelles one. In the light of City of God's success, Meirelles was offered a $65m Hollywood picture - which he turned down - and was then given backing for an ambitious project called Intolerance II, to be filmed in five countries. Currently he is in preproduction of The Constant Gardner, based on a John le Carré novel and starring Ralph Fiennes. With the Oscar nomination, he has become one of the hottest directors in town.
Meirelles is also happy to acknowledge Lund's input. He says: "I brought Katia onto the project for the 10 months of production and her work with the cast of the film was invaluable. Although the American Academy does not recognise co-directors, I know that I could not have got the performances from the actors without her contribution."
Lund has had some international interest in her work, but nothing as high profile. She is working on an MGM film with kid rapper Lil' Romeo and developing scripts about subjects as diverse as Colombia and Israel. She wants to move on from stories about drugs, violence and favelas, but she wants to keep her base in Brazil.
She keeps in touch with most of the City of God cast and is still involved in Us from Cinema. Meirelles gives it money and Lund is on the advisory board. "Us From Cinema is now a solid NGO [non-governmental organisation]. I didn't want it to be 'Katia's little social project'. I am not independently wealthy. I have to take care of my own career. That's as much as I can do."
