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GOLDEN GATE (PALACE II) (2002) - d. Fernando Meirelles & Kátia Lund
This is from the same Paulo Lins book which was the source of the feature 'City of God.' It's a 21 minute short, and I don't know if it was made before 'CoG' or at the same time, but it played the festival circuit and was clearly intended as a stand-alone film. Undereducated guess is that this was shot as a sort of test, and then, as they were pulling 'City of God' together, they put 'Golden Gate' out as an advance look at the world of the feature.
'Golden Gate' stars two of the main kids from the feature, but in different roles. In 'City of God,' Darlan Cunha (aka Steak and Fries) and Douglas Silva (the young Lil' Ze) play two of the nastiest characters in the film's early stages. They're front and center again, but their characters aren't nearly as 'hard' and the story is much more about the transition from being a kid into the life of a street tough. The two want tickets to see a really cool band play, and though cash is hard to come by, they try to avoid running drugs for local dealers to get it. There's a great sense of humor in the film as it details all these different little low-fi scams that favela kids pull, and it gets heavily into the code of the street. This storyline wouldn't have worked in the feature; the humor is too front and center and there's breathing space for the kind of nuance that doesn't easily fit a multi-character narrative.
More than anything else, what's amazing is how well this story works as a short. It's just great, pushing the comedy without avoiding the harsher stuff that feeds 'City.' The kids are incredibly real. I liked it at least as much as the feature.
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