The pretty pink church in the small town of Paulínia, deep inside São Paulo state in Brazil, is a long way from Stockwell Tube station in South London, where the Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes was shot dead by police in July 2005. A thousand people bustle about outside the church; there is a buzz of chatter and a sense of expectation. It could almost be a carnival. Instead, it is a funeral: a key scene in the movie the Brazilian director Henrique Goldman is making about the life of de Menezes.

Truth and fiction began swirling around de Menezes right after his death, so it is perhaps appropriate that a film is being made about his life. Brazuca — the name is a slang word for Brazilians living abroad — has a £2 million budget split between the UK Film Council and its Brazilian equivalent. Stephen Frears and Rebecca O’Brien, a frequent collaborator with Ken Loach, are its executive producers, and the mostly Brazilian cast has already filmed extensively in London.

Frears’s film Dirty Pretty Things was set in similar territory: immigrants struggling in London. But Goldman is not making a political film. “Jean Charles was an ambitious man, but he wasn’t political,” Goldman says. “He was a dreamer. A survivor. Streetwise. A womaniser. Fun-loving. He wasn’t a saint, he was a loveable rogue.”

Goldman is making an emotional story about Brazilian immigrants in London. “I hope that it’s going to be a much stronger way of accusing the police.”

The director, who has lived in London for 20 years, worked with Frears at the National Film and Television School and his films display a similar mix of relaxed affability and steely persuasion. Directing a scene on a dirt road, he gets a crowd of schoolchildren waving at the fire engine carrying the coffin containing the departed de Menezes to stop giggling long enough to get his shot. The children are waving the Brazilian flag: common at funerals in that country. “That doesn’t happen in England,” Goldman observes. “You have almost some kind of shame with the English flag.”

Goldman is fond of surprises. He films documentary-style: no script, no make-up, natural light. And while the inquest in London into de Menezes’s death has scant mention in the Brazilian media, his movie is big news there. There is a scrum of Brazilian press on set, many of whom Goldman has cunningly persuaded to join in, playing themselves. They have been drawn in by the stars of Brazuca, who include some of Brazil’s biggest names.

Selton Mello — the star of the hit Brazilian film My Name Isn’t Johnny, a sexy drug dealer thriller — plays de Menezes. He isn’t on set for obvious reasons: his character is already dead. But the TV and soap opera star Vanessa Giácomo spent time in the dead man’s rural hometown of Gonzaga researching her leading role as de Menezes’s cousin Vivian, a cleaner who lived with him in London. “For us he’s a hero,” she says. “One of the people who go abroad, looking to fulfil their dreams and fight for a better life.”

Weeks ago, just as the inquest into de Menezes’s death was about to begin in London, I too travelled to Gonzaga to meet relatives and family. The family sitio, or smallholding, is at the end of a dirt track. I spent most of a day with the family, lunching on ox liver, black beans and rice with de Menezes’s brother Giovani and his wife in their small house, eating home-made cheese in the parents’ kitchen.

The parents are often described as simple country people, which is unfair. I found an intelligent, charming and hospitable family devastated by tragedy.

Maria de Menezes, angry tears edging her eyes, asked me, again and again: “Why did they do it? Why did they kill my son?”

In Paulínia, as the day draws on, the crowd outside the church swells as news buzzes around town that the film’s stars have arrived. The actors are besieged by fans. Nobody recognises two young women standing next to the stars. But these scenes are a much rawer experience for Patrícia Armani da Silva and Leide Menezes Figueiredo — both are cousins of de Menezes, and they are playing themselves. “It is a little difficult,” Armani da Silva says. “I’m a bit anxious, I have a headache, I’m stressed. But I’ve already done worse scenes in the film.”

As the coffin is carried into the church, hands reach out to touch it. The greeting is deafening, the emotions crank even higher. Goldman calls for another cut. He wants more. “You can talk. You can cry. You can ask questions,” he says. The greeting begins again, the press scramble. In the midst of this anguish it is impossible to tell the actors’ manufactured emotions from that of the two cousins, but Figueiredo looks particularly troubled. “It’s hard because I go back and remember everything,” she says later. “But it’s worth it, to show personally what we really suffered.”

The theatre actor Luis Miranda plays Alex Pereira, another of Jean Charles’s London-based cousins who turned into a family spokesman, becoming an expert on British law in the process. “He carries the political flag of the film,” Miranda says. “It’s about his relationship to the structure of the country, how it receives and how it treats foreigners.”

For Miranda, Brazuca is a story about globalisation, the unstoppable flow of populations. “Things are getting really interconnected,” he says. “I think the film talks about this. This process of globalisation transformed humanity.”

Britain and its institutions are regarded warmly in Brazil. Maria de Menezes told me that her son had loved London and its well-mannered police force. For Goldman, what is important is not that the police killed de Menezes in what he calls a “tragic accident”. It is what was said afterwards. “They tarnished the name of a very respected institution,” he says. “I find this hard to forgive.”

Brazilian police are often corrupt, violent and unpredictable. Innocent deaths at police hands are common, particularly in Rio. Meanwhile the Policia Civil in greater São Paulo are investigating a supposed extermination squad, called Os Highlanders (the Highlanders) in the Policia Militar, supposedly linked to the discovery of five decapitated corpses in the past six months. “We don’t have the moral right to go against a British institution,” Miranda says.

Goldman, too, is not looking to apportion blame. “The most important thing is that it was a tragic accident. The police were under severe stress. Such tension.” Legal processes and the Metropolitan police aside, the de Menezes family had nothing but good things to say about the people they met when they had travelled en masse to London for previous legal hearings. Patrícia Armani da Silva still lives and works in London. “I love the country because it’s a really good place to live,” she says. “We can’t blame the people. We can’t blame everybody.”

Goldman insists that he doesn’t want to focus on the police or their processes — his film is not supposed to look like an episode of The Bill, he says. Instead Brazuca will be a human story, as much about Vivian’s journey as the death of her cousin. “As a film-maker you are always looking for stories that matter to you and also to a wider audience,” he says. “It was an interesting story of an outsider in London and a great way to tell about Brazilians in London.”

As filming comes to an end, the inquest into de Menezes’s death has revealed a picture of bad police organisation, communication breakdown and stressed firearms officers. A surveillance officer known only as Ken, whose team followed de Menezes on his bus journey to Stockwell Tube that day, said his team had made no clear identification of the Brazilian as a suspect before he entered the station. One of the firearms officers who shot him, known just as Charlie 2, has apologised profusely to the family. “I am responsible for the death of an innocent man,” he said. “That is something I have got to live with for the rest of my life.”

It is claimed that as many as 150,000 Brazilians now live illegally in Britain and to them de Menezes is an unlikely hero. Goldman says the young electrician’s parents know this. “I think they have a deep understanding of the way Jean Charles has become some sort of a brand name,” he says. “I think they understand what we’re trying to do.”

Aftermath of a shooting
By Louise Cohen

July 22, 2005 The Brazilian electrician was shot eight times inside Stockwell Tube station in South London. Police officers, on their first deployment of Scotland Yard’s shoot-to-kill policy, mistook him for one of four terrorists wanted for the failed attacks of July 21.

July 23, 2005 The Metropolitan Police admit that de Menezes was not connected to the terrorist attacks.

July 25, 2005 Inquest into the killing opens at Southwark Coroner’s Court.

Aug 22, 2005 The de Menezes family protest outside Downing Street, delivering a letter to Tony Blair asking for a full judicial public inquiry.

Nov 2005 An Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), Stockwell Two, is announced into the conduct of the Met chief, Sir Ian Blair.

July 2006 The Crown Prosecution Service says that there is insufficient evidence to prosecute any of the officers involved, but that the Met will be prosecuted. The inquest is adjourned until after this prosecution.

Aug 2007 Stockwell Two finds that by 3pm on the day of the shooting senior police officers had “strong suspicions” that a man had been mistakenly killed. Sir Ian says he was not told until the following day.

Nov 1, 2007 The Met is found guilty of failing in its duty of care and is fined £175,000 with £385,000 costs.

Nov 7, 2007 The London Assembly passes a motion of no confidence in Sir Ian.

Sept 27, 2008 The inquest opens.

— Brazuca will be released next summer

Explore Film

• Film Reviews

• DVD

• Oscars

• Bollywood

Editor's choice

• Vote for the Breakthrough Award winner
• David Tennant back as Hamlet after back surgery
• Matt Smith is the new Dr Who