This film is the last of a series based on the four elements (water, earth, fire and air). The earlier parts weremade by Jo o Monteiro, Joao Botelho and Joaquim Pinto and were screened last year in Rotterdam. Jo o Mário Grilo was commissioned to portray the element earth. The series was set up and produced by Paolo Branco for Portuguese television and resulted in striking feature films by Portugal’s most talented film-makers.Grilo based his part on a true story. Protagonist is the old farmer Augusto Henriques, who has tilled a small piece of land on the slopes of a mountain in northern Portugal. Many of his neighbours have left the area, but he feels it to be his duty to stay tied to the soil. Fate strikes in the form of a common neighbourly quarrel in which he kills the woman next-door. The stubborn farmer stoically takes the consequences of his act and allows himself to be taken off to jail, where he lives fourteen years with just one desire: to return to his land.Augusto’s actual land is realistically portrayed by Grilo, but the film obviously aims to tackle more general topics such as the disappearance of the age-old agrarian lifestyle and people’s ties with their land.
