As you say, Kátia Lund was credited as co-director — not director. That would explain why Fernando Meirelles — not Lund — received the Oscar nomination. In all honesty, I don’t know how this “co-director” credit came about. Whether Lund was an assistant director or handled various duties or …

I do know that the Directors Guild frowns at shared directorial credits. That’s why Joel and Ethan Coen used to split their film credits, with Joel as the nominal director and Ethan as the nominal editor when the brothers performed both duties.

I just did a search for “Cidade de Deus” and “Katia Lund.” Didn’t discover anything about the co-director credit, but did find an interesting — or rather, bizarre — interview in which Lund is quoted as saying that Christianity (“the Church”) is the only salvation for slum kids involved in drug gangs for it provides them with a new identity as members of “a new organization, with new brothers and new functions.”

http://www.comunidadesegura.org/pt-br/node/11560 (use Google translator or some such tool)

Elsewhere Lund says she has no religion. That’s is all about “democracy, civic duty and citizenship.”

http://www.brazzil.com/p106mar03.htm

I don’t know whether Senhora Lund had not been included in the nomination because of the strict DGA/Academy rules about one director per film, and the high burden of proof of “established duo” for exceptions to the rule — or because the credit was a “nominal” one which had, perhaps, been created as the result of negotiations — and therefore, properly omitted from substantive discussions of the direction.

I would like to know; as it is, the omission of Sra. Lund’s name from discussions of the film, e.g., the Wikipedia article which treats it, is — absent some kind of explanation — troubling.

“Motion pictures that are nominated for the Foreign Language Film award shall not be eligible for Academy Awards consideration in any category in any subsequent Awards year”

this is new?