Behind the Sun (2001)

Recommended
Brazil/France
Feature Film
Original Title: Abril Despedaçado
Director: Walter Salles
Writers: Karim Ainouz, Sérgio Machado, Walter Salles, João Moreira Salles, Daniela Thomas, Ismail Kadare
Cinematographer: Walter Carvalho
Composers: Ed Cortês, Antonio Pinto, Beto Villares
Cast: Rodrigo Santoro, Ravi Ramos Lacerda, José Dumont, Rita Assemany, Flavia Marco Antonio, Luiz Carlos Vasconcelos, Everaldo De Souza Pontes, Caio Junqueira, Servílio de Holanda

In Salles’s beautifully crafted, symbolically rich 1910-set Brazilian (anti-) revenge western, a 20-year-old sugarcane farmer – who has just killed the son of a neighbouring farmer in revenge for the killing of his own brother, and who is now under a sentence of death himself (as family honour states that blood must be met with blood) – falls for a travelling circus performer, and experiences love for the first time. Iain.Stott