A Balada do Sr. Watson

After a long time apart, a mother and her daughter meet again in the desert, between ruins and memories. The daughter destiny denies her mother dream. The past is circle that imprisons both the dead and the alive. The daughter wants to break it but shadows are spying out.

Young Alice lives with her mother Helena in Ciarema, in a house facing the sea. The residence suffers from the advance of the sea levels. The daughter, an environmentalist, plans to move elsewhere, but the mother wants to stay in town. They need to find a solution together.

In the interior of the Inhamuns, the driest and poorest piece of land in Ceará, the ghost town of Cococi, among ruins and neglect, is a kind of living museum from immemorial times. In the middle of the deep caatinga, wandering among the ruins and the shadows, lives Dona Laura, 70 years old, brooding over memories and pain.

The sertão is everywhere, the sertão is within us. The concrete advances against Dona Maria, but she moves forward, calmly in the world.

After taking in an abandoned child, Teresa meets Antônio and the two begin a journey on the roads. The common past, for them, is the memories of a city submerged at the bottom of a dam. Life is a dream, but the future is uncertainty.

The elderly Perpetua, feeling the approach of death, decides to prepare Zeca, her beloved grandson, to the inevitable. She tells him the story of a king and a queen, a wealthy and powerful couple who lost their only child but wishes to bring him back to life. Meanwhile, Damião e Josefa work hard to support their family and to prepare their daughter Fátima's wedding. At the end, the tale told by Perpétua and the destiny of that family will cross.

In an isolated fishing village, Esmerina is married to a fisherman and has 26 children. The oldest son secretly desires to leave to see the world beyond the sea. The daily routine of this family is suddenly altered when a mysterious boat runs aground on the beach entering Ana, a girl who survived the shipwreck.

The dry quarry and a forest that still beats. A very sick father reviews the daughter. Resentments are brought to the table. The memory of the dead awakened by blood, objects, shadows and dreams affects Clarisse at this scenario of beauty and agony. Husband and business are expecting she in the city for a cathartic outcome.

Rescue historic community of Caldeirão, devout religious movement led by José Lourenço, who organized a camp in primitive socialist mold. The community was destroyed by police from Ceará and bombing by planes, leaving more than a thousand peasants killed. Through testimonies and symbols of popular culture, the film is a reflection on the power, freedom, and struggle for land.

The raft man Manuel Jacaré was swallowed by the sea when Orson Welles was filming It's All True in 1942. The fact evokes memories of the dictatorship of the Estado Novo, of World War II, of Ceará fishermen's struggle for labor rights and housing in their traditional space - target of real estate speculation.