After an extended period directing original screenplays, dos Santos returned to the creative engagement with literature that was the wellspring of his early masterpieces, offering a combinatory adaptation of five stories by the renowned Brazilian novelist João Guimarães Rosa. Openly embracing a mode of magical realism, dos Santos' celebrated film tells the story of a farming family defined by the absence of its father who abruptly abandoned his wife and children, sailing away down the river, including his son who continues to communicate with his father, speaking daily to him from the river bank. While offering an evocative vision of rural Brazil as a timeless land of mystery and solemnity, The Third Bank of the River is also bitingly satiric in the remarkable depiction of religious belief when the family moves to the city and its youngest member, a mesmerizing little girl, is revealed to be a kind of saint, capable of miraculous acts. -Harvard Film Archive
The story of a poor woman living in the backwoods of Brazil and working as a maid. One day she is unfairly fired from the house where she was working and goes to the big city, facing a cruel and hostile world, working in factories, bars and bordellos.
An ubiquitous folk singer narrates the tale of a young boy, who apparently becomes immune to gunfire after his mother arranges for him to have an amulet bearing Ogum's blessings. As time goes by, he becomes a valuable member of a mobster's hit-team, but ends up joining a group of people who resist his original employers.
Augusto Matraga is a violent agressive farmer who, after being betrayed by his wife and trapped by several enemies, is bitten up and left for dead, being rescued by a couple of humble small farmers who nurse him for a long time until he is well again. Influenced by the couple, Matraga starts a long penitent life while waiting for his hour and chance to payback, starting a fight between his violent nature, his hidden desire of vengeance and the mysticism and goodness which is also part of him.
Vidas secas narra la historia de una familia Fabiano, su mujer, la sinhá Vitória, y sus dos hijos en el sertao de los años cuarenta. Realizado en una época de gran agitación política y social, en vísperas del golpe de estado que iba a instaurar la dictadura militar en Brasil, es uno de los títulos mayores del cine latinoamericano. (FILMAFFINITY)
