City of God is a 2002 Brazilian
crime drama film co-directed by
Fernando Meirelles and
Kátia Lund, released in its home country in 2002 and worldwide in 2003. The story was adapted by
Bráulio Mantovani from the
1997 novel of the same name written by
Paulo Lins, but the plot is loosely based on real events. It depicts the growth of organized crime in the
Cidade de Deus suburb of
Rio de Janeiro, between the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1980s, with the closure of the film depicting the war between the drug dealer Li'l Zé and vigilante-turned-criminal Knockout Ned. The tagline is "If you run, the beast catches you; if you stay, the beast eats you", a proverb analogous to the English "Damned if you do, damned if you don't".