House of Sand (Casa de Areia)

Brazil, 2005 (115 minutes)

Friday June 16, 7:00pm Pacific Place
Saturday June 17, 1:15pm Pacific Place

Opens Friday August 11

The story of three women, marooned in a remote corner of northwest Brazil is portrayed by real life mother and daughter Fernanda Montenegro and Fernanda Torres in Andrucha Waddington’s cinematic masterpiece House of Sand (Case de Areia). The two actresses alternately play grandmother, mother and daughter in a story that spans sixty years from 1910 to 1969. An eccentric aristocrat moves his pregnant wife, Aurea (Torres) and mother-in-law, Dona Maria (Montenegro) to a desolate world of enveloping sand dunes and builds his house on the edge of a seasonal lagoon. Soon after arriving he dies and the women are left to survive on their own. Their only contact is the group of escaped slaves and subsistence fisherman nearby. From among them Massu (Brazilian pop star Seu Jorge) becomes their provider and consummates a relationship with Aurea after ten years of sexual tension, against the immense backdrop of breathtaking Lençóis Maranhenses, Brazil.