Among the prominent Latin filmmakers to have emerged during the late-20th and early-21st centuries, director Fernando Meirelles has perhaps been the most critically acclaimed of them all—no small feat when his contemporaries have included Walter Sales, Alfonso Cuaron and Alejandro Amenabar. With his breakout feature, the Oscar-nominated “City of God” (2002), a violent and kinetic film about drug-dealing gangs in the slums of Rio de Janiero, Meirelles displayed a flair for stylized camera moves, rapid editing and gritty realism—elements that soon became trademarks. A one-time commercial
