17 Facts About Fernando Meirelles

Fernando Ferreira Meirelles is a Brazilian film director, producer and screenwriter.

Fernando Meirelles is best known for co-directing the film City of God, released in 2002 in Brazil and in 2003 in the US by Miramax Films, which received international critical acclaim.

Fernando Meirelles was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Director in 2005 for The Constant Gardener, which garnered the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Rachel Weisz.

Fernando Meirelles directed the 2008 adaptation of Jose Saramago's novel Blindness, and the 2011 film 360.

In 2019 Meirelles directed and produced in Brazil the HBO original series Joint Venture and directed The Two Popes for Netflix.

Fernando Meirelles saw his older brother, Jose Marcos, die in a car-bike accident when he was only 4 years old.

Fernando Meirelles grew up in Alto dos Pinheiros, West Zone of Sao Paulo, and spent every vacation on the farms of relatives from both sides of his family.

Fernando Meirelles produced mostly western and thriller parodies, using his relatives and friends as actors.

At 11, in 1967, Fernando Meirelles spent a year in the United States in California, where he had contact with the hippie movement, which impressed him.

At 13, with a borrowed Super 8 camera, Fernando Meirelles started producing small films, inspired by Norman McLaren's animations.

Fernando Meirelles studied at the Architecture and Urbanism College in the University of Sao Paulo during the 1980s.

Fernando Meirelles presented it and graduated with the minimum acceptable grade.

Fernando Meirelles is still one of the partners of O2 Filmes, the biggest Brazilian advertisement firm, which has produced City of God, Domesticas and Viva Voz.

In 1997, Fernando Meirelles read the book Paulo Lins's City of God.

Fernando Meirelles decided to adapt it to film, which was done in 2002, and decided that the actors in it would be selected among the inhabitants of slums.

Fernando Meirelles insisted that the soundtrack be based on the music of African countries, and most of the filming was done in Kenya.

In 2019, Fernando Meirelles directed and produced the HBO original series Joint Venture, in which marijuana has been legalized in Brazil.