NO JARDIM DO MUNDO

The Alentejo is the vast region of plains in the South of Portugal. Through stories of farmhands, cowherds and other workers, we realize what life has been for the men and women there. With lucidity, poetry, and humour, they recall the years of torment: the immense estates of the rich landowners, submission, hunger, illiteracy, the 48-year regime of António Salazar, its secret police and its prisons. On the 25th of April 1974, the Revolution of Carnations put an end to the dictatorship. The farm workers occupied the big estates and turned them into cooperatives, which were legalized by the Agrarian Reform Law. But successive governments changed the law and gave the land back to the former landowners. Beyond all these dramatic upheavals, between tales of darkest misery and collective euphoria, No jardim do mundo conveys rhythm and light with scenes from daily life and poems of popular poets.