This film is a pride of Brazilian film industry. Certainly the best work from the great director Denoy de Oliveira (now deceased), it was based on a novel from the celebrated writer Domingos Pellegrini, "O Encalhe dos 300". It tells the story of a group of people who find themselves bogged down in a muddy highway situated in a remote forest after a rainstorm. This miscellaneous group consists of people so different as truck drivers and a wealthy businessman, nuns and prostitutes, drifters, crooks and even artists from a little circus. The only thing they have in common are the hardships they endure during their seven days in the rain and the mud, isolated from the world. This initial situation unfolds into one million stories of love and hate, comradeship and infamy, life and death; during this hell we take a deep tour into the human soul. One little dialog captures the spirit of the film: one kid asks his mother, a poor migrant from northern Brazil, "Mum, where are we going to?", and the mother: "Does it make any difference?". No other movie that I have ever seen has made such an intimate portrait of an entire people (in this case, the Brazilian people), than this one. Touching, unforgettable.
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