Barren LivesMovies like Barren Lives
- Key Features:
- Poverty, Drought, Survival, Family, Social commentary, Migration, Hope, Desperation, Rural setting, Hardship, Resilience
- Tone:
- serious, gritty, restrained
- Target Audience:
- Film festival enthusiasts, Socially conscious viewers, Documentary lovers, Viewers interested in Brazilian culture
- Emotional Arc:
- Desperation → Hope
Barren Lives

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.
Barren Lives
A middle-class Black family in Brazil copes with the election of a far-right extremist president. The mother believes that she's cursed after an unexpected encounter, while her husband puts all of his hopes into their son's soccer career.

Iremar works at the rodeo in North East of Brazil. From his home, the truck he uses to transport the animals, he dreams of a future in the region's booming clothing industry.

Brazilian badlands, April 1910. Tonho is ordered by his father to avenge the death of his older brother. The young man knows that if he commits this crime, his life will be divided in two: the twenty years he has already lived and the few days he has left to live, before the other family avenges their son's death. He is torn between fulfilling his ancestral duty and rebelling against it, urged by his younger brother Pacu. That's when a tiny travelling circus passes through the vast badlands where Tonho's family lives.

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.

In the Bolivian altiplano, Virginio and Sisa, an elderly Quechua couple who have lived a quiet life for years, face an impossible dilemma during an unusually long drought: resist or be defeated by the hostile environment and the relentless passage of time.

The story of Francisco, a very simple and poor man whose dream was to see his children become country music stars, and who made all the efforts to make it happen.

1942, in the middle of Northeastern Brazil, two very different men meet along the road: Johan, an aspirin salesman avoiding the German draft, and Ranulpho, a rural Brazilian seeking escape from the drought.

Remmy and her parents, refugees from Earth, have found peace on the Martian outskirts until strangers appear in the hills beyond their farm. Told as a triptych, the film follows Remmy as she struggles to survive in an uneasy landscape.

When João goes to Brazil in search of a better life, he meets punk music enthusiast Maria and falls in love with her. But his involvement in the local drug trade makes him the target of a vicious drug lord.

Impoverished priest Harihar Ray leaves his rural Bengal village in search of work. His wife, Sarbojaya, looks after their rebellious daughter, Durga, and young son, Apu. The children enjoy the small pleasures of their difficult life.

In this wildlife drama, a worsening dry season in the Kalahari Desert leaves prides, packs and herds to rely on the power of family to survive.

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.

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.

In a small village in Catalonia, the peach farmers of the Solé family spend every summer together picking fruit from their orchard. But when plans arise to install solar panels and cut down trees, the members of this tight-knit group suddenly face eviction – and the loss of far more than their home.

Indian migrant worker Najeeb Muhammad goes to Saudi Arabia to earn money. However, in a twist of fate, he finds himself living a slave-like existence, herding goats in the middle of the desert.

A family of four are the sole inhabitants of a small island, where they struggle each day to irrigate their crops.

A world wide electrical outage occurs. Everything that requires electricity comes to a stop. Tokyo is nearly ruined. Yoshiyuki Suzuki decides to escape from Tokyo with his family.

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.

The sierras of southern Brazil, 1963. The son of an French man and a Brazilian woman, Tony is a young man with a profound love of cinema and poetry. After graduating from college he returns to his small town in rural Brazil, to find out that his father had left for good, back to France. Tony then looks for the company of his fathers friends in search of information and references of a lost male role-model. He becomes a school teacher and a male figure to kids, in an attempt to provide them with something he lacks himself. A series of developments lead him to a surprising final lead on his fathers' whereabouts and reasons for leaving.

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.

The lives of a macho butcher, his wife, a lonely waitress, a sadist and a flophouse manager intersect in Recife, Brazil.

The survival instincts of a road-tripping family are put to the test when they have no other choice but to stay the night at a remote homestead.

In lawless badlands, reclusive Cabeleira sets out to discover the fate of his gunman father and grows to be a feared assassin himself.

The new film by French director Cédric Kahn focusses on Philippe Fournier, a man who lives with his 2 sons, having decided not to give them back to their mother after she won custody of the children. The children Okyesa and Tsali must grow up in the shadow, hunted by the police but always free and on the move.

10-year-old Pixote endures torture, degradation, and corruption at a local youth detention center where two of its members are murdered by policemen who frame Lilica, a 17-year-old trans hustler. Pixote helps Lilica and three other boys escape and they start to make their living by a life of crime which only escalates to more violence and death.

In 1980, best friends Juliano and Joaquin join the gold rush at Serra Pelada, Bald Mountain, a mountain town near the mighty Amazon river. As the town grows in numbers, it also sees an explosion in violent crime and pollution. Soon the friends' dreams of hitting the jack pot are shattered. Winner of the 2014 Cinema Brazil Grand Prize.

In the arid landscape of Rajasthan, four women navigate their way through personal and cultural difficulties.

A day in the life of Azucena, who is running out of time to keep herself and her family from being evicted; Rafael, a lawyer who sets out to reunite a mother with her daughter; and Teodora, a sick old woman who searches for her long-lost son before it is too late.

Street vendor Denilson's life changes when his father dies and leaves him his entire legacy. Along with the fortune, however, Denilson also inherits the family that will do everything to get their hands on this inheritance.

Early autumn, godforsaken Russian countryside. A local hunter Michail witnesses a skirmish in the middle of the forest - three men want to kill the forth, Andrey. Kind-hearted Michail helps Andrey escape and together they run from the villains who chase them. Thus, two totally different men start a long and dangerous journey together, constantly arguing with each other regarding their ideology, morals and opinions about life. But life will put everything on its place and make the men understand who they really are.

A mother attempts to keep her family safe as war rages and a sniper lies in wait outside her home.

Looking for a brighter future in metropolitan Manila, Oscar Ramirez and his family leave their miserable life in the rice terraces of Banaue, in the northern Philippines. In the sweltering capital, where all kind of perils lurk in every corner, Oscar catches a lucky break when he is offered a steady work for an armored truck company and the senior officer Ong takes him under his wing.

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.

The lives of two Danish families cross each other, and an extraordinary but risky friendship comes into bud. But loneliness, frailty and sorrow lie in wait.

Bacurau, a small town in the Brazilian sertão, mourns the loss of its matriarch, Carmelita, who lived to be 94. Days later, its inhabitants notice that their community has vanished from most maps.

While her mom is away, a teen sneaks out of the hippie commune where she lives and embarks on a life-changing adventure to discover who her father is.

An emotional journey of a former school teacher, who writes letters for illiterate people, and a young boy, whose mother has just died, as they search for the father he never knew.

“Re-Existence” is a documentary about migration stories of individuals from the Brazilian queer community.

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...

A farmer and his wife live in a rural part of Inner Mongolia with their three children. Chinese population control policies prevent them from having any more. The farmer sets out for the nearest town to obtain birth control. He comes upon a Russian truck driver who has ended up in a lake. The farmer takes the man back to his farm, and after initially being appalled, the Russian becomes enchanted with the peaceful life of the countryside and decides to stay. But his presence presages big changes for the peasants.

Don Poli, the patriarch of a family embedded in politics, faces the change of party in his state - after a hundred years in power - losing all his privileges. Humiliated and angry, he threatens to disinherit his family and leave to rebuild his life. This forces his children (Kippy, Ramses and Belén) to take extreme measures to ensure their future, causing everything that could go wrong to turn out worse.

Two young brothers are abandoned by their mother during summer of 1948, they run into the forest and survive there for seven years.

Quique, Clara and little Lucas are vacationing in northern India. One night, sleeping outside during a storm, they are brutally attacked. Hours later, Quique is rescued by a native and taken to a remote isolated village in the mountains.

After the earthquake of Guilan, a film director and his son travel to the devastated area to search for the actors from the movie the director made there a few years previously. In their search, they see how people who have lost everything in the earthquake still have hope and try to live life to the fullest.

In a dystopian future, the Brazilian government decrees a measure that forces black citizens to migrate to Africa in an attempt to return to their origins. Seeing themselves in the center of terror, two cousins take refuge in an apartment, where they debate social and racial issues, and share the same yearning for the change of country.

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.

The uneventful lives of three young men who live in a small, poverty-stricken village in southern Italy.

For ten years, engineer Bill Markham has searched tirelessly for his son Tommy who disappeared from the edge of the Brazilian rainforest. Miraculously, he finds the boy living among the reclusive Amazon tribe who adopted him. And that's when Bill's adventure truly begins. For his son is now a grown tribesman who moves skillfully through this beautiful-but-dangerous terrain, fearful only of those who would exploit it. And as Bill attempts to "rescue" him from the savagery of the untamed jungle, Tommy challenges Bill's idea of true civilization and his notions about who needs rescuing.

Deep in a secluded forest, Marko lives in isolation under the watchful eye of his overprotective father, who is determined to keep his young son safe from the Evil Ones. Deeply lonely, and increasingly curious about the outside world, Marko yearns to uncover the secrets of life beyond the forest and begins venturing further from home. But after a cruel turn of events grants his wish sooner than he ever imagined, Marko is forced to flee and embark on a grim journey filled with unknown dangers and a glimpse into a world forever changed.

Aaron Falk returns to his drought-stricken hometown to attend a tragic funeral. But his return opens a decades-old wound - the unsolved death of a teenage girl.

Three family members head deep into the woods for a hunting trip that doubles as a distraction from their troubles at home. When all of their gear is stolen, they turn on each other, but soon realize there are much more treacherous forces at work.

A portrait of the myth of maternity around the story of Pepa and her daughter, who are evicted from their home and forced to wander for a place to live with no support network.

A Bedouin village in Northern Israel. When Jalila's husband marries a second woman, Jalila and her daughter's world is shattered, and the women are torn between their commitment to the patriarchal rules and being true to themselves.

Shuhei is leading a tough life. His alcoholic mother Akiko can only hook up with bad guys and order Shuhei to go get money from his disapproving grandparents instead of going to school. Except raising the little half-sister, his rock-bottom life seems to have no end.

A film set in the Spanish side of the Basque Country, beginning in the Carlist war of 1875 and ending during the Spanish Civil war of 1936. The film portrays how one single act of cowardice shapes the life of the next three generations of two families and fuels the intense rivalry which will span the next sixty-one years.

A woman married to a former politician during the 1971 military dictatorship in Brazil is forced to reinvent herself and chart a new course for her family after a violent and arbitrary act.

Check out the hilarious story of luck and misadventures of Tino, a family man whose life is transformed after he wins the lottery. Dazzled by wealth, this boaster spends all his money on a life of luxury and ostentation. But after finding out that he is bankrupt, he faces comical situations: besides not telling his wife he is broke because she is pregnant and cannot get upset, Tino must accept help from his neighbor who is an extremely thrifty financial adviser and the only one capable of getting him out of the rut.

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.

A group of young backpackers' vacation turns sour when a bus accident leaves them marooned in a remote Brazilian rural area that holds an ominous secret.

Fernanda is married to Tom, with whom she has a five-year-old daughter, Joana. The couple is in the midst of wear and tear caused by living together for many years, which generates constant friction. Who helps Fernanda to overcome the crisis is her partner Aníbal, inseparable partner during the arduous journey between saving the marriage or putting an end to it.

The Topalović family has been in the burial business for generations. When the 150-year-old Pantelija dies, five generations of his heirs start to fight for the inheritance.

A Japanese photojournalist revisits Vietnam after the liberation to document the nation, and begins following and documenting the young children from a poor Vietnamese family.

A group of settlers traveling through the Oregon High Desert in 1845 find themselves stranded in harsh conditions.

Samuel, a widower, is taking care of his 7-year-old daughter alone. Overwhelmed and stressed out, he decides to isolate in a chalet he was renovating with his wife in the Italian Alps. Indifferent to the anger of locals who help police to hunt down migrants, he comes across a woman who fled Afghanistan. Samuel decides to help her reach the border, thinking it will take them a few hours. But an agressive group of men comes after them…

A young father and his two children struggle to find harmony after his wife leaves them for another man.

On the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, Irene has only a few days to overcome her anxiety and renew her strength before sending her eldest son out into the world.

As a privileged teenager living in an affluent suburb of Rio de Janeiro, Jean has little to worry about beyond games, grades and girls. But as his overbearing father drags the family into debt, Jean is forced into a change of lifestyle which opens his eyes to the world beyond his 'casa grande' - not least that of the feisty, mixed-race firecracker Luiza. Cultures, classes and generations collide in this engrossing coming-of-age drama from Brazil.

Although first glance reveals little more than stones and sand, the desert is alive. Witness moving rocks, spitting mud pots, gorgeous flowers and the never-ending battle for survival between desert creatures of every shape, size and description.

Based on Érico Verissimo's literary trilogy, Time and the Wind follows 150 years of the Terra Cambará family and their opponents, the Amaral family. The struggles between the two families begin in the missions and lasts until the end of the 19th century. The film also features the period of formation of the state of Rio Grande do Sul and the dispute of territory between the Portuguese and Spanish crowns.

While Olivier, a 39 year-old foreman gives his job everything he’s got, Laura, his wife and the mother of their two children, abandons the family home, leaving Olivier alone to face his responsibilities. Lost and completely thrown, Olivier is going to have to come to terms with his new status as a single father raising his children alone. Because Laura’s not coming back.

Married couple Fugui and Jiazhen endure tumultuous events in mid-20th century mainland China as their personal fortunes move from wealthy landownership to peasantry.

When they discover their town lacks funding for a sewage system, but does have a federal grant to make a movie, a group of villagers decide to make a sci-fi joint about a monster who lives in the building site of a septic tank.

A young woman, Janice, is living with her restrictive and conservative parents, who lead a dull working-class life and consider their daughter to be “misbehaving” whenever she’s trying to find her own way in life.

Theo is living the good life in an upscale Brazilian neighborhood. He’s a hardworking doctor, husband, and father. However, Theo has chosen his career over his family, and little by little he discovers that his world is crumbling around him. His beloved mentor and surrogate father is dying, and his wife announces that she wants a divorce. Yet nothing prepares him for the day when he comes home to discover that his 15-year-old son, Pedro, has disappeared. Theo takes to the road in search of his son. In a journey that leads him throughout Brazil, Theo discovers what really matters to him. Searching for his missing son, Theo finds himself.

Based on the writer/director's childhood, FARMING tells the story of a young Nigerian boy, 'farmed out' by his parents to a white British family in the hope of a better future. Instead, he becomes the feared leader of a white skinhead gang.

Nina is an elderly woman who lives alone and feels distressed by the increasing violence in her neighborhood. Amidst conflicts with her neighbors, she decides to film the movement of drug traffickers from her window, hoping to assist the police. After months of recording suspicious activities, her initiative attracts the attention of a journalist, who approaches Nina and offers to support her in her mission.

Amid the sweltering summer heat in northern Argentina, two middle-class families retreat to a crumbling country estate and a modest townhouse, where strained relationships, simmering tensions, and the presence of children and servants quietly expose the fractures of family life. Between idle days, gossip, and unspoken desires, the boundaries of class, tradition, and faith are reflected in their everyday interactions.

In 1890, Pontus, the starving writer, wanders the streets of Christiania, in search of love and a chance to get his work published. All he meets is defeat and suffering while his sense of reality is withering. One moment he is delighted and the next he curses everybody. All the time he manages to maintain human dignity and pride.

A director faces creative block while working on his latest film – a reimagination of his adolescence growing up in a mountain village in rural Japan.

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.

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1950. In the conservative home of the Gusmão family, Eurídice and Guida are two inseparable sisters who support each other. While Guida can share with her younger sister the details of her romantic adventures, Eurídice finds in her older sister the encouragement she needs to pursue her dream of becoming a professional pianist.

The true story of a working class boy who moves to the nation's financial capital at a young age and becomes one the most influential politicians in Brazilian history.

Otavio is an idealistic union leader trying to organize workers at a factory to resist the company's exploitative practices. His son, Tião, one of the employees, is more of a realist and doesn't want to risk losing his job by striking. This clash of perspectives puts the father and son at odds. Fortunately, Tião's mother, Romana, is on hand to act as a moderator between the two opinionated men.

Julie finally gets an interview for a job where she can raise her children better only to run into a national transit strike.

The amazing true story of a Uruguayan rugby team's plane that crashed in the middle of the Andes mountains, and their immense will to survive and pull through alive, forced to do anything and everything they could to stay alive on meager rations and through the freezing cold.

In a desperate attempt to reach Europe and crouched before an airstrip in Cameroon, a six-year-old boy and his older sister wait to sneak into the holds of an airplane. Not too far away, an environmental activist contemplates the terrible image of an elephant, dead and fangless. Not only do you have to fight against poaching, but you will also have to meet the problems of your newly arrived daughter from Spain. Thousands of kilometers to the north, in Melilla, a group of civil guards prepare to face the furious crowd of sub-Saharan people who have begun the assault on the fence. Three stories linked by a central theme, in which none of its protagonists know that their destinies are doomed to cross and that their lives will no longer be the same.

Suddenly and inexplicably Marco and Giulia wake up with three children aged 10, 9 and 6 who call them mum and dad. Getting rid of it and returning to the happy "previous" life will become their only goal.

A father and his daughter struggle to survive in deep space where they live in isolation.

A nuclear bomb is detonated in Los Angeles, and the nation devolves into unprecedented chaos. Ex-Green Beret Jeff Eriksson and his family escape to The Homestead, an eccentric prepper’s fortress nestled in the mountains. As violent threats and apocalyptic conditions creep toward their borders, the residents of The Homestead are left to wonder: how long can a group of people resist both the dangers of human nature and the bloodshed at their doorstep?

A father and daughter journey from Denmark to an unknown desert that exists in a realm beyond the confines of civilization.

A photographer in the rain forest is captured by wild natives, and after months of living with them, he marries the chief's daughter and helps protect the village from a vicious cannibal tribe.

Three generations of women who share a strange family tradition: all widowed in extraordinary circumstances; all give birth only to girls. This is the film based on the television series.

In the near future, society collapses and water becomes scarce. When a greedy water baron starts violently clearing out survivors, Kendal, a 17-year-old teenager, fights the baron's henchman to keep a well open.

The three sons of devout Danish farmer Morten have widely disparate religious beliefs. Youngest son Anders shares his father's religion, but eldest son Mikkel has lost his faith, while middle child Johannes has become delusional and proclaims that he is Jesus Christ himself. When Mikkel's wife, Inger goes into a difficult childbirth, everyone's beliefs are put to the test.

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.

In a small suburb on the outskirts of Rome, the cheerful heat of summer camouflages a stifling atmosphere of alienation. From a distance, the families seem normal, but it’s an illusion: in the houses, courtyards and gardens, silence shrouds the subtle sadism of the fathers, the passivity of the mothers and the guilty indifference of adults. But it’s the desperation and repressed rage of the children that will explode and cut through this grotesque façade, with devastating consequences for the entire community.

During the last forty years, the photographer Sebastião Salgado has been travelling through the continents, in the footsteps of an ever-changing humanity. He has witnessed the major events of our recent history: international conflicts, starvations and exodus… He is now embarking on the discovery of pristine territories, of the wild fauna and flora, of grandiose landscapes: a huge photographic project which is a tribute to the planet's beauty. Salgado's life and work are revealed to us by his son, Juliano, who went with him during his last journeys, and by Wim Wenders, a photographer himself.

Best friends Deco and Naldinho co-own a cargo boat in Brazil's Salvador da Bahia. They give a ride to a sultry prostitute named Karinna, and soon both men fall prey to her considerable sexual charms, pushing the bounds of their friendship to the limit.

Juan and his urban family live in the Mexican countryside, where they enjoy and suffer a world apart. And nobody knows if these two worlds are complimentary or if they strive to eliminate one another.
