The House of Sand

The House of Sand is a 2005 Brazilian film directed by Andrucha Waddington. It stars real life mother and daughter Fernanda Montenegro and Fernanda Torres. The House of Sand was filmed entirely on the coast of northern Brazil, inside Lençóis Maranhenses National Park. Plot In 1910, pregnant Áurea (Torres) along with her mother, Maria (Montenegro) arrive at a remote, desert-like part of the Brazilian state of Maranhão—called the Lençóis Maranhenses—where her fanatical husband Vasco de Sá (Ruy Guerra) has relocated the family from the state's capital, São Luís, to start a farm. Soon the white settlers realize that they are not alone: a group of descendants of runaway slaves live in the area, in a settlement—generally known as a quilombo—they call "The Island" because it is the only permanently fertile spot in a sea of sand where it rains only during the rainy season. Due to the madness of Vasco, Maria seeks to bribe the black settlers to take her and her daughter away, but they, while taking her money (it is basically useless in the local barter economy), do no such thing. However, soon enough Vasco's workers abandon the farm. Vasco, enraged over this betrayal, dies when he accidentally buries himself under a heap of construction material for the half-finished house. This leaves the two women with no way of returning to the city. Left to their own devices, they venture out to explore the area. They find a fishing hut on the shores of the ocean and notice that Massu (Seu Jorge), the fisherman, has salt which he regularly obtains from his father on the nearby Island. Massu takes them there, as they seek to follow the salt trail out of the desert. However, Massu's father does not know where the salt comes from since he is the grandson of a runaway slave; he already had been born in the sanctuary; he does not know the world beyond the Island. Yet soon they establish contact with the itinerant trader who brings the salt (fittingly called Chico do Sal), but he too does not offer any viable connection back to the civilization.