Vanja Orico

O Segredo da Rosa

Friends Severina and Maria José struggle to survive in a suburb of Rio de Janeiro. The first is a widow who sells flowers and the second has a lover who does little to help with expenses. Their children sell peanuts during the day. One day, the children get lost and are found again at Jaks' house, who offers to sell Severina certain suspicious merchandise, disguised among the roses.

Le Grand Échiquier

Lampião, King of the Badlands

The story of how a quarrel between families set poor farmer Virgulino Ferreira da Silva on the path to become Lampião, the greatest leader of the cangaceiros - bandits who roamed the Northeast of Brazil until the late 1930s.

Variety Lights

In Italy, Checco Dal Monte manages a troupe of traveling performers with plenty of heart but minimal talent. At a small town engagement, he encounters the starry-eyed, gorgeous Lily Antonelli, and hires her as a dancer on the show. Vivacious Lily quickly sells out crowds and earns the resentment of Checco's mistress, Melina Amour, but the fledgling performer has far bigger ambitions and soon sets her sights on a higher-profile role.

The Bandit

In the time of the "cangaceiros" in the badlands of the Northeast of Brazil, the cruel Captain Galdino Ferreira and his band abduct the schoolteacher Olívia, expecting to receive a ransom for her. However, one of his men, Teodoro, falls in love and flees with her through the arid backcountry chased by the brigands.

Independência ou Morte

The story of how D. Pedro I proclaimed the Brazilian independence on September 7th, 1822, and rose from prince of Portugal to first emperor of Brazil.

The Dolphin

According to an amazonian legend, every month, during the full moon, a brazilian fishing village receives a mysterious guest: the Dolphin, who transforms into a human to seduce and be loved by women and hated by men. One of her conquests is the daughter of a fisherman, who has a son with the Dolphin. He constantly reappears to seduce her, and even when she marries, he continues to look for her. This provokes the ire of the husband, who wants to kill him anyway.

O Caçador de Esmeraldas

The life of Fernão Dias, a 17th century Brazilian frontiersman known as "the Emerald Hunter".

Cangaceiros de Lampião

On the day of Pedro Boiadeiro's wedding, a band of cangaceiros who survived the Angicos massacre invade his home, then proceed to beat him up, and abuse and murder his wife. Pedro sets out to get revenge on each one.

The Third Bank of the River

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