“Award-winning shorts helmers Juliana Rojas and Marco Dutra know how to create atmosphere” - Variety
“Emotionally perceptive, refreshing in its lack of self-importance” - Screen International
Helena (Helena Albergaria) is planning to open a small local grocery shop, but her husband Otavio (Marat Descartes) has just lost his job in insurance, and isn’t best pleased at the implications of his wife becoming the family breadwinner. Helena hires Paula (Naloana Lima) a nanny-cum-housekeeper for their daughter and two new assistants for the shop, but nothing appears to be as straightforward as she’d hoped. And then there’s the mysterious markings on the wall of the shop, the sewage seeping through the floor, the strange noises that appear to come from nowhere and the howling dog on the street outside that further threaten the stability of their middle-class lives.
In their assured first feature, Juliana Rojas and Marco Dutra craft an impeccably performed drama of the secrets that lie beneath the veneer of bourgeois respectability. Juggling elements of horror with a sharp eye for social observation, Hard Labour presents a blistering dissection of the class structures of Brazilian society in a precarious economic climate where past privileges offer no guarantee of future security. - Maria Delgado, BFI London International Film Festival
