Cinema Slate is proud to announce the New York theatrical release of HARD LABOR (Trabalhar Cansa), the acclaimed feature film debut by Brazilian co-directors Marco Dutra (When I Was Alive) and Juliana Rojas (Sinfonia da Necrópole).
An official selection at the Cannes Film Festival (Un Certain Regard), HARD LABOR also won the Jury Prize at the prestigious Paulínia Film Festival in Brazil. It is now scheduled to open Friday, October 30, at New York's Cinema Village, before expanding to other national markets throughout the fall.
A one-of-a-kind blend of horror elements with socioeconomic concerns, the film was widely praised for its cinematic (and inventive) take on neoliberal policies that have radically altered labor relations in Latin America's largest nation.
Also rare was the way in which Dutra and Rojas merged two strong currents in Brazilian cinema (the horror genre and social realism) into a fresh, brooding and coherent film that pushes the boundaries of the medium without betraying the legacies of its genres.
In HARD LABOR, a straight middle-class couple slowly succumbs to the allures of entrepreneurship - and the horrors of an increasingly schizophrenic job market.
Although emotionally in sync, Helena (Helena Albergaria) and her white-collar husband Otavio (Marat Descartes), suddenly find themselves at opposite ends of the labor force: just as she gets ready to open a grocery store (and become a business owner), he is fired from a "stable" job.
As Otávio goes through a series of humiliating and ego-crushing job interviews (and is forced to re-invent himself for a new job market), Helena jumpstarts her grocery store in a mysterious (and progressively deteriorating) building. Soon enough, her enthusiasm for a better future begins to give way to a dark, pervasive doom - and Otávio's self-upgrading morphs into an eerie transformation.
Beautifully translating the evanescent forces of cyber-age economics into a Grand Guignol of kitchen-sink sensibilities, HARD LABOR is unlike any other Brazilian film you've seen in the last decade.
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