Reworked since 1997?

I saw this film or a version of it in 1997 at the Montreal World Film Festival. The film, as I recall, was a dark journey through one man's conscience as he recounted his own desires, betrayal, abuse, and criminality. He was a low-class pimp trying to survive deep poverty. The film had rather raw footage both in its subject matter (violence and sexuality) as well as in its look. The English subtitles were crude with long passages of narration/dialogue translated by only a handful of English words. Some of the English was clearly misused. There were sequences in the film that were affecting, but there were many others that made little sense and/or were repellant to the audience. The audience was silent when the film ended and I don't believe there were any questions for the director. I recall feeling badly for him. I had felt that there was an interesting movie in the material, but we clearly had not seen it. It was rather surprising to me when I happened to try to find this "City of God" film, since "Ciudades des Deus" is the sole response to that query, is considered a 2003 (not a 1997) release, has received a rating of 7.9 from 53 users, and is listed as being 87 minutes long (the 1997 version had a listed running time of 77 minutes). I can't imagine anyone in the Montreal audience giving that film a good rating. I would hope that someone might respond to explain what happened to this film between 1997 and 2003. Was the film re-edited, reshot, etc.? I would also be interested in seeing comments from people who have seen the 2003 version.