Landless (Chão), dir. Camila Freitas, Brazil 2019, 110 min., Portuguese with English subtitles
The Landless Workers Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, or MST) is a mass grassroots movement founded to fight for land reform and against social inequality in rural Brazil. Since 2015, the MST has occupied land belonging to an indebted sugarcane factory in the central state of Goiás, pressing for its redistribution – and for four years, Camila Freitas followed a group of workers through their daily struggles to settle down here and build self-sustaining lives.
In the rich tradition of political cinema, Landless (Chão) is both a human story and an instrument of change, giving national and international visibility to the MST’s ongoing battle against the political and economic forces of the conservative Brazilian establishment.