At this point, I will watch any film that takes place in the Brazilian favelas, as long as Fernando Meirelles is involved. And I imagine that a lot of my peers would feel the same, if they would only see his latest, City of Men. After all, this is the man who in 2002 gave us City of God, which I've determined to be the second most popular contemporary foreign-language film for people of my generation (Amelie being the first). The film also thrust Meirelles into international acclaim and success, including an Oscar-nomination for Best Director, yet it wasn't his first time presenting a riveting story set in the Rio shantytowns.

In 2000, Meirelles and his City of God co-director, Kátia Lund, made a short film titled Palace II. It was something of a precursor to (and apparently a test-run for) City of God, and it was based on an excerpt from the same source novel, written by Paulo Lins. But narratively, it has nothing to do with the subsequent feature film. Palace II is actually set in the present -- City of God takes place in the '80s -- and follows two young friends, Wallace (nickname: "Laranjinha") and Luis Claudio (nickname: "Acerola"), who live in poverty in the favela.

Considering his new three-year production deal over at Universal/Focus, Fernando Meirelles still hasn't been linked to any projects associated with that studio. His next film, Blindness, which will be adapted by Don McKellar from the novel by José Saramago, is so far not set up with any distributor (as far as I can tell), and now the sequel to his breakout hit City of God (co-directed by Kátia Lund), which he did not direct but produced, has just been picked up by Miramax. This latter deal is not that surprising since Miramax also distributed the original, but it would not have been impossible to get the follow-up going at Focus.

The sequel, titled City of Men, which is also the name of the television series spun-off from the first film, was directed by Paulo Morelli and is currently in post-production. From the synopsis that I've seen, it basically looks like either a continuation or remake of the show, as it follows its main characters, Laranjinha (Darlan Cunha) and Acerola (Douglas Silva), both of whom were also the focus of Meirelles' and Lund's short film Golden Gate (Palace II).

So for those doing the math, it seems that City of Men is actually based on a show that was based on a feature film that was based on a short film. Except, maybe we should actually eliminate the feature film part of that equation. Since Cunha and Silva (and other actors from the show) didn't play the same characters in City of God, that film has nothing to do with the rest of these things, and is possibly only related for marketing purposes.