The Middle of the World

Vicente Amorim’s first feature is an emotional drama in the genre of Brazilian road movies and sertão films. Set before Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s first election, it is based on the true story of a truck driver, Cícero Ferreira Dias, whose family bikes from Paraíba state to Rio de Janeiro in search of a job paying 1,000 Brazilian reais, a highly unrealistic salary for an unskilled man. Wagner Moura (Elite Squad, Narcos), in one of his breakthrough roles, and Cláudia Abreu star as Romão and Rose, a couple with five children making the 3,200-kilometer (2,000-mile) family bicycle trip, earning some money along the way singing the hits of Roberto Carlos—the Brazilian Julio Iglesias—at road stops. David França Mendes’s sensitive script makes it subtly clear that, for a poor man, this is a utopian value—a fantasy that gives Romão comfort and hope. A New Directors/New Films 2004 selection. Preserved 35mm print courtesy of the Harvard Film Archive.