Ney Santanna

Solange is a recently married young woman whose wedding night did not end well. After constant fights with her husband, she decides to live through her sexual frustration by sleeping with strangers she picks up on crowded buses in Rio de Janeiro.

Bondomil, a quiet little town, becomes famous because in its main square there's a tree with strange fruits, with the format of the male sex organ, supposed to be an aphrodisiac for women. Soon the population grows wild, and tourists gather around it.

Santiago is a very unlucky guy, but he managed to marry Marina, a talented restorer who works in a museum. Their marriage is not in the best condition, largely because of their routine and financial situation. But, trying to reconnect with her husband, Marina decides to use her best friend, Argeu, to make her spouse jealous. The problem is that all the plans they make together end up going wrong or causing more confusion.

A three-episode anthology film based on short stories by Brazilian writer Graciliano Ramos.

Faustão, a fruit seller, is selected by God himself to become Inspector Faustão, defender of the animals. He's joined by Sérgio Mallandro in a mission to save a group of quails from an illegal smuggler, while also having to deal with a bratty kid and a jealous girlfriend.

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.

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