Lídio Silva

Wanted for killing his boss, Manuel flees with his wife Rosa to the sertão, the barren landscape of Northern Brazil. Thrust into a primordial violent region, Manuel and Rosa come under the influence and control of a series of frightening figures.

Eduardo Coutinho was filming a movie with the same name in the Northeast of Brazil, in 1964, when there came the military coup. He had to interrupt the project, and came back to it in 1981, looking for the same places and people, showing what had ocurred since then, and trying to gather a family whose patriarch, a political leader fighting for rights of country people, had been murdered.

In a fishing village, animosity grows between father and son, when the latter starts to desire his lover. In the midst of the tension, a co-worker dies and another teases about the dilemma.

In Bahia, an educated black man returns to his home fishing village to try and free people from mysticism, in particular the Candomblé religion, which he considers a factor of political and social oppression, with tragic outcome.

A poor community in Salvador organizes a resistance against the destruction of the Água de Meninos street market.

In rural Brazil, villagers battle wealthy land barons for the sake of their own survival.