Barren LandMovies like Barren Land
- Key Features:
- Moral decay, Friendship, Systemic failure, Organized crime, Drug trafficking, Social unrest, Betrayal, Survival, Corruption
- Tone:
- gritty, serious
- Target Audience:
- Crime drama enthusiasts, Socially conscious viewers, International cinema fans
- Emotional Arc:
- Hope → Despair
Barren Land

Barren Land is the story of three friends. All three trapped between the abandonment of the institutions, the violent and unstoppable rise of the narco in the province and the dangerous increase of social discontent. Three friends trapped in a powder keg that will test their friendship.
Barren Land
In vivid images, the documentary-like story of a drover and his family in the northern badlands of Brazil during the drought. A family in the search of new hope and destiny.

Three friends who have been fired from the company where they worked and are demoralized because of their unemployment status. In these circumstances, they meet to undertake the plan that mentions the title but there is a problem: the car with which they would travel has broken down and the crane must wait.

Lucía and her son live isolated from society in a flat place where there’s practically no life. The small family unit formed by mother and son hardly ever receives visitors, and their goal is to lead a quiet existence. At first they succeed, but the appearance of a mysterious, violent creature that starts stalking their small house will put the relationship that unites them to the test.

After being deported back to Mexico, a man has no choice but to join the vicious drug cartel that has corrupted his hometown in order to survive.

A young man recently released from prison recruits his three best friends to rob the local drug kingpin who is responsible for his incarceration.

During a time of political upheaval in Brazil, two strangers meet by coincidence in a foreign land and end up caught in the middle of a gem smuggling ring.

A troubled man runs away to Mexico and is recruited to join a paramilitary group of teens fighting the drug cartels. He proves himself to the group, but questions their motive.

The living dead have taken over the world, and the remaining humans live in a walled city to protect themselves as they cope with the situation.

Residents of an enclosed neighborhood in the middle of Mexico DF are shocked by a violent crime, and for one resident in particular, young Alejandro, the drama is ratcheted up when he encounters the lone kid who escaped the event and is hiding out within the neighborhood's borders.

Two soldiers from opposite sides get stuck between the front lines in the same trench. The UN is asked to free them and both sides agree on a ceasefire, but will they stick to it?

A good-natured man has an unexpected deadly confrontation. Instincts kick in to clean up the mess caused in the name of self-defense but does one really get away free after killing someone?

A sheriff and his son who are tracking down a group of bank robbers on their way to Mexico, only to discover that they are being stalked by a far more deadly enemy — The Reeker.

When brash Texas border officer Mike Norton wrongfully kills and buries the friend and ranch hand of Pete Perkins, the latter is reminded of a promise he made to bury his friend, Melquiades Estrada, in his Mexican home town. He kidnaps Norton and exhumes Estrada's corpse, and the odd caravan sets out on horseback for Mexico.

A couple of friends work for a taxi driver to rob his passengers, but they feel like they're getting ripped off. They decide to plan their own robberies, but they are amateurs and things don't go too well. One of the youths, Cordoba, whose girlfriend Sandra is pregnant, just wants to get enough cash so they can leave Argentina and get to Uruguay to start a new life. He and his friends plan one last robbery, but things don't go as planned.

A sheriff tries to keep the peace when a desperate family man violently robs a pill mill with his brother-in-law, alerting an enforcer for the New Orleans mafia.

Rivalries, dark secrets, and sexual tension emerge when three best friends find themselves stranded on a yacht in the middle of the ocean under suspicious circumstances.

A slab of food descends down a vertical facility. The residents above eat heartily, leaving those below starving and desperate. A rebellion is imminent.

Collin must make it through his final three days of probation for a chance at a new beginning. He and his troublemaking childhood best friend, Miles, work as movers, and when Collin witnesses a police shooting, the two men’s friendship is tested as they grapple with identity and their changed realities in the rapidly-gentrifying neighborhood they grew up in.

Three childhood friends; when they grow up, the poor boy is shut out from the possibility of romancing the girl because of class issues. He leaves town, learns to play pro-level poker, wins a fortune, then goes home to ruin his rival's life.

In the Mexican state of Michoacán, Dr. Jose Mireles, a small-town physician known as "El Doctor," shepherds a citizen uprising against the Knights Templar, the violent drug cartel that has wreaked havoc on the region for years. Meanwhile, in Arizona's Altar Valley—a narrow, 52-mile-long desert corridor known as Cocaine Alley—Tim "Nailer" Foley, an American veteran, heads a small paramilitary group called Arizona Border Recon, whose goal is to halt Mexico’s drug wars from seeping across our border.

Togo just wants to watch his neighbors' homes, wash their cars and clean up their sidewalks. But the drug traffickers want more from him.

A tough young man, who helps to kick poor people out of their houses, falls in love with a girl. She lives with her father in the building about to be demolished.

One weekend, after years without seeing each other, several friends, over whom hangs the shadow of a murky episode of the past, meet in a house in the mountains. During the first night, a strange incident takes place that leaves them isolated.

Three friends are arrested after committing an accident with their car. After finishing their sentence, they become partners with the owner of a decoration workshop. But he deceives them and spends the money in gambling. They force him to sign a waiver of his workshop but he wants to get it back.

Cielo is a mother whose teenage daughter is kidnapped in Northern Mexico. When the authorities offer no support in the search, Cielo takes matters into her own hands and transforms from housewife into a vengeful militant.

A young man becomes convinced that the solution to all his problems is to live in jail, and he will do whatever it takes to get it.

Leandro, an unemployed mason and his friend, Tocho, attempt to rob a tobacconist in the Vallecas district of Madrid, but Mrs. Justa, the tobacconist, impedes it alerting the neighbors who notify police. Inside the shop, the confrontation between the two friends and their 'hostages', the tobacconist and her niece Angeles, is relaxing, and a budding sympathy arises between them.

Heli must try and protect his young family when his 12-year-old sister inadvertently involves them in the brutal drug world. He must battle against the drug cartel that have been angered as well as the corrupt police force.

Three boys and two girls go backpacking from the city to a paradisiacal island. There they rent motorcycles, travel around the prettiest and most remote spots, camp out in the woods, on a coastal cliff, get drunk and swim in the sea. The following day they enter a deep, maze-like cave to explore it and get lost inside.

On their last night together, four longtime flatmates' lives are suddenly upended when a secret is revealed during the course of an evening celebration.

Benjamin and Dom have been best friends since they were kids. On their last night together, Dom plans to send Benjamin off with a pocketful of cash. All he has to do is deliver a package over the border for a friend...

The air is thick with tension as a military squad proceeds to the foot of a mountain base, where they're ordered to wait for backup and hold their position. The mountain is shrouded in fog and the men are exhausted. They've been fighting guerrillas on enemy turf for some time, and they're worn down by the stress and anxiety of battle. The men don't want to wait; they want to charge up the hill, fearing that their comrades in the base have been overrun by the guerrillas. The squad's leader tries futilely to keep his men in line while dealing with his insolent second-in-command.

In a time of starvation, a survivalist lives off a small plot of land hidden deep in forest. When two women seeking food and shelter discover his farm, he finds his existence threatened.

For three US Border Patrol agents, the contents of one car reveal an insidious plot within their own ranks. The next 24 hours may cost them their lives.

The thirteen survivors of a catastrophe by a tunnel's collapse tries to balance their experience trapped along 15 days inside it with their day-by-day outside it.

The sordid lives of an addict, an ex-con, and a luchador collide when an organ harvesting caper goes very, very wrong.

Alfonso is an old farmer who has returned home to tend to his son, who is gravely ill. He rediscovers his old house, where the woman who was once his wife still lives, with his daughter-in-law and grandson. The landscape that awaits him resembles a wasteland. Vast sugar cane plantations surround the house, producing perpetual clouds of ash. 17 years after abandoning them, Alfonso tries to fit back in and save his family.

David Carr is a British Communist who is unemployed. In 1936, when the Spanish Civil War begins, he decides to fight for the Republican side, a coalition of liberals, communists and anarchists, so he joins the POUM militia and witnesses firsthand the betrayal of the Spanish revolution by Stalin's followers and Moscow's orders.

A man is left at the altar by his bride, so his two cousins decide to bring him to the place they used to go on vacation when they were kids.

A special forces team is sent to snuff out a drug den, but find themselves trapped inside it after being set-up and betrayed.

A meteorite will destroy the world in three days. For Ale, that means 72 hours of alone time, getting as drunk as possible. But when a mysterious drifter appears, the self-serving Ale faces a more immediate danger. Now, he finds himself protecting his mother and his brother's children from his fellow man in humanity's final hours. Daniel Casadella co-stars in this thought-provoking drama.

Three convicted criminals escape from prison carrying only a güiro, a tambor and an accordion. During their journey, they meet with a bunch of interesting characters and are forced to use their musical skills to help them get home.

Manuel, a Spanish politician whose high-class lifestyle is based on nefarious and illegal business threatens to break his entire party after a newspaper exposes him to the public eye. Rather than admit to any wrongdoing, he decides to sell out his whole party in an effort to avoid jail time. It's a decision that will put many lives at risk.

When a narco past his prime refuses to pay a debt to an upstart, only a secret stash of money can save his men. But guess what the gardener just found?

After a mysterious leader imposes his law in a brutal system of vertical cells, a new arrival battles against a dubious food distribution method.

On a faraway mountaintop, eight kids with guns watch over a hostage and a conscripted milk cow.

The drama is centered on four friends and business partners who in one evening are forced to find a way to save their company and themselves. The impossible decision they face is agreeing on who will be the one to sacrifice their freedom to save the others from personal and financial demise. It is a race against time that will put their friendship and sanity to the test. Who will take the fall?

A salesman for a natural gas company experiences life-changing events after arriving in a small town, where his corporation wants to tap into the available resources.

Set in 2013 Monterrey, Poncho is a student at a prestigious college, he goes to get weed with his friend El Greñas, they go to La Bomba to get some. Although when La Bomba runs out of weed, they decide to take him on a quest to get more weed from El Perro. When Poncho needs to go back home, La Bomba kidnaps both Poncho and Greñas and taking Poncho's phone and car. La Bomba contacts Poncho's father to get him one million dollars to free his son, though Bomba didn't know the deadly consequences.

El Bola is a 12-year-old boy raised in a violent and sordid environment. Embarrassed by his family life, he avoids becoming close to classmates. The arrival of a new boy at school changes his attitude towards his classmates and friendship. The heart of the story is the change in El Bola's life, at almost all levels, after befriending this new classmate.

A boy escaped from home, listening, crouched in the depths of his hiding place, the cries of the men who seek him. When the game passes, what remains before him is an infinite and arid plain that he must cross if he wants to get away definitively from what has made him flee. His steps will intersect with those of a pastor and, from that moment, nothing will be the same for either of them.

Emily and Nate Weaver leave the city for the rural comfort of Nate’s ancestral home in the country. Once there, Emily is plagued by horrifying visions and haunted by the ghosts inhabiting their isolated new home. When Nate’s behavior undergoes a strange and fearful metamorphosis, Emily fears she might be the latest target in a murderous tradition.

Cagalera and Moloteco are two teenagers from San Gregorio Atlapulco who are desperate to get out and move up and away from oppressive circumstances. When they hear of an opportunity to buy a spot in the electrician’s union, which could transform their lives, they quickly devolve into the criminal, adult underworld of Mexico City in a bid to buy their freedom.

Somewhere in Spain, four ETA terrorists await a phone call before carrying out a mission, while the 2010 FIFA World Cup, where Spanish soccer team is one of the favorites to win, is being held in South Africa.

Five friends return home from a marriage in Canada to the United States. Not far from the border, two customs officers stop them to check their identity.

For more than 15 years, two Marseille friends and criminals battle the law, rival gangs, prison authorities and even mined beaches in order to survive.

Four friends visit a rural locality of Chile, are brutally attacked by a man and his son. After not finding help in the town, they decide to confront these men with the help of a pair of policemen. But in this way, they will discover that their attackers have in their blood the direct legacy of the darkest period of Chilean history and will have to face the most brutal enemy.

A group of friends stranded near a desolate cornfield find shelter in an old farmhouse, though they soon discover the dwelling is the center of a supernatural ritual.

A corrupted border agent decides to clean up his act when an impoverished woman's baby is put up for sale on the black market.

A group of friends embark on an adventure to find a classmate from university who disappeared without a trace on graduation day.

In an attempt to help his friend Marcos with his impotence, Jaime sets up him up with another friend Josita. But the sex date fails, and so he comes in to help. What first appears to be just another sexual experience for all three evolves to a full romantic relationship.

An abandoned child steals to survive and has problems when he decides to steal from the priest who helps him.

An old couple, their only son, the son's wife, a young man and his lover live peacefully in a village. Then, a terrifying earthquake strikes that causes a nearby nuclear station to explode. The residents must evacuate, but the family lives on a farm, with only half of the area designated as an evacuation area.

Four friends become stranded in Eastern Europe and have to become hit men, prostitutes, corrupt cops, smugglers and more to make it home.

Aliens wipe out the earth population except for 3 people. How will the adapt and survive?

In the barrio of Oak Springs lives a strong and stubborn group of elderly friends who refuse to be gentrified. Their leader, Lupita, keeps them together as a community, a family. But little did they know, their beloved bingo hall is about to be sold to a much more powerful force than money itself.

Quim drives around an isolated rural area through a maze of lanes. When he drives into the woods, he gets lost. Trying to find his direction, he suddenly gets shot from the hill. On his escape from gunshots, he meets Bea, an attractive young woman, who apparently is lost as well. Suspicious of each other, they join forces to run away through the forest, unprotected, cold, hunted...

The four friends Lukas, Julius, Gino and Sanchez are trying to survive the everyday life in Neukölln, Berlin between drugs, gangs, rap, violence and boredom. Until they are one day making a serious decision with serious consequences because of a dead certain plan.

When her son's alleged kidnapper is released for lack of solid evidence, a reputable and well-known attorney takes matters into her own hands with unintended and spectacularly disastrous consequences.

Set in a near-future, militarized world marked by closed borders, virtual labor and a global digital network that joins minds and experiences, three strangers risk their lives to connect with each other and break the barriers of technology.

In 2013, in Cairo, a tragic fate brings together several detainees from different political and social backgrounds inside a police truck, during the turmoil that followed the ousting of president Morsi.

Pauline, a devoted and generous home help nurse, raises her two children alone, while also looking after her father, a former steelworker. Taking advantage of her popularity, the directors of an extremist political party suggest she become their candidate at the mayoral elections.

With their father in prison for murder, siblings Alison and Brandon are instantly considered suspects when a string of killings plagues their town, and they must fight to clear their names.

A group of young friends make an incomprehensible discovery in an abandoned mine, but the more they try to change the future, the more they seal their fate.

The Spanish Deep South, 1980. A series of brutal murders of adolescent girls in a remote and forgotten town bring together two disparate characters - both detectives in the homicide division - to investigate the cases.

This documentary walks the line between fact and fiction, delving into corruption in the Mexican police through the experiences of two officers.

In the harsh post-war years' Catalan countryside, Andreu, a child that belongs to the losing side, finds the corpses of a man and his son in the forest. The authorities want his father to be made responsible of the deaths, but Andreu tries to help his father by finding out who truly killed them. In this search, Andreu develops a moral consciousness against a world of adults fed by lies. In order to survive, he betrays his own roots and ends up finding out the monster that lives within him.

The film tells the story of two good friends who live together, Andrew, an agoraphobic travel agent who works from his home, and Dave, a loser who works in an office where he is treated with contempt. Just when it seems things can't get any worse for the two, the entire world outside of their house disappears and is replaced with an endless white void.

The young couple Nora and Alec are on their way back from a long road trip. In a desert town they want to take a break, but when they wake up the next morning, they are no longer in the motel where they had actually checked in. Overnight, the by a group of crazed killers wearing animal masks, have been abducted. What would happen if people were treated like cattle for slaughter? On the farm, this horrific idea comes true. As Nora and Alec soon find out, they are not the only ones locked in cages, fattened up and fed only to be slaughtered, disemboweled and eaten as a delicacy by their torturers. For the young couple begins a fight for bare survival.

Two men commit a robbery. One is caught but the other escapes. He ends his escape on a lonely and deserted beach where he meets a beautiful woman named Erótica. They start a passionate love affair that is interrupted when the other con man escapes from prison and joins them. A sexual/sentimental love triangle begins leading to a violent confrontation between the two men.

Introverted Girona student Nacho meets two delinquents from the city's Chinatown and gets caught up in a summer onslaught of burglaries and hold ups that will change his life.

When a small town near the Arizona-Mexico border is wiped out overnight, suspicion falls on the lone survivor. But a roll of photos the survivor took that night tells a different story.

In Rome it hasn’t rained for three years and the lack of water is overturning rules and habits. Through the city dying of thirst and prohibitions moves a chorus of people, young and old, marginalised and successful, victims and profiteers. Their lives are linked in a single design, while each seeks his or her deliverance.

Pierre is 25 when he returns from Wyoming to his fiancée and take over the family farm. Twenty years later, the farm expanded and so did the family. It's the time of happy days, at least at the beginning. The debts accumulate and Pierre is exhausted at work. Despite the love of his wife and children, he is slowly falling...

Mario Moreno portrays a professor in this movie. A small town in the middle of no where requests the school Mario Moreno is working in for a teacher. He ends up going to give the town a hand. When he arrives he comes to know the corrupt leaders who through out the movie try to make him leave. Although he is being harassed you can see how much he cares for the kids and their circumstances. He deals with problems by using his hilarious comments.

In downtown Madrid, a series of mysterious gunshots trap a motley assortment of people in a decrepit bar.

The story of two men on different sides of a prison riot -- the inmate leading the rebellion and the young guard trapped in the revolt, who poses as a prisoner in a desperate attempt to survive the ordeal.

An enigmatic tale of four people whose lives are intertwined by destiny are subject to the laws of fate. They discover that luck is something they cannot afford to be without as they gamble with the highest stakes possible in a deadly game from which only one of them will emerge intact.

The accidental breakdown of an irrigation valve launches a hot confrontation between the mainly Latino farmers in a tiny New Mexico town and the real estate developers and politicians determined to acquire their land for a golf resort.

An idealistic FBI agent is enlisted by a government task force to aid in the escalating war against drugs at the border area between the U.S. and Mexico.

A Swedish immigrant family struggles to adapt to their new life on the American frontier during the second half of the 19th century amidst civil war, native uprising and the lure of gold in California.

After a friend overdoses, Spoon and Stretch decide to kick their drug habits and attempt to enroll in a government detox program. Their efforts are hampered by seemingly endless red tape, as they are shuffled from one office to another while being chased by drug dealers and the police.

Pan Xiao, a young lawyer, goes to a rural small village settled in the western desert lands of China to handle the case of a falcon poacher who has ran over a policeman. Pan wins the case through sophisticated reasoning and forces the poacher to give him his car as a reward. Then, he just drives back home, but the return will not be an easy one.

Buenos Aires, Argentina. A luxurious van is parked on the sidewalk. A man enters with the purpose of stealing whatever he can find, but when he wants to leave, he cannot. The doors do not open, the control panel does not respond: the van has become an armored box and he is trapped like a mouse.

Caye is a young prostitute whose family is unaware of her profession. She meets her striking Dominican neighbour Zulema, an illegal immigrant, after she finds her in the bathroom, badly beaten up. They strike up a close friendship unbeknownst to Caye's xenophobic co-workers.

Jake Remy leads a gang of outlaw cutthroats making their escape toward Mexico from a successful robbery. Barring their way is a river--crossable only by means of a ferry barge. The barge operator, Travis, refuses to be bullied into providing transport for the gang and escapes across river with most of the local populace--leaving Remy and his gang behind, desperately seeking a way across. A river-wide stand-off begins between the gang and the townspeople, both groups of which have left people on the wrong side of the river.

To escape the crisis in Venezuela, and his alcoholism, Roque retreats into the Amazon jungle to renovate a cabin he built during happier times. He struggles with feverish visions caused by alcohol abstinence, and his desire for redemption becomes distorted when he joins old friends to work in an illegal gold mine controlled by Colombian guerrillas. The violence required to work in the mine plunges Roque into a cycle of self-destruction that devours his interior. He will need the fortitude to get out and start anew.


