Product Details

• Actors: Alberto Alexandre, Fernando Alves Pinto, Alexandre Borges, Canto e Castro, Laura Cardoso
• Directors: Daniela Thomas, Walter Salles
• Writers: Daniela Thomas, Walter Salles, Marcos Bernstein, Millor Fernandes
• Producers: Afonso Coaracy, António da Cunha Telles
• Format: Black & White, Color, Subtitled, NTSC
• Subtitles: English
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Fox Lorber
• VHS Release Date: November 7, 2000
• Run Time: 100 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00004YA2D
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #403,189 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

A simple but superb little thriller. Aspiring actor Paco (Fernando Alves Pinto) lives in a poor area of São Paolo, Brazil, with his mother, who yearns to go back to her native Spain. When she dies abruptly, Paco finds himself without direction and falls in with a man named Igor, who asks him to carry an antique violin to Lisbon. There he finds himself caught up in a black-market scam, from which his only hope of escape is a woman named Alex (Fernanda Torres)--only Alex has an agenda of her own. Foreign Land resembles a lean, low-budget film noir like Detour or The Asphalt Jungle, only filmed with the spare yet beautiful visual aesthetic of a director like Antonioni. The gritty black and white images are astoundingly gorgeous, yet visual style never gets in the way of an engrossing, emotionally compelling crime story. As Paco and Alex drive to the border of Spain, hoping to escape the dangerous mess their lives have become, Foreign Land becomes downright heartbreaking. Sexy, suspenseful, poetic, and shot through with dark, ironic humor--basically, this is the movie just about every American director wants to make but doesn't know how. A knockout. --Bret Fetzer

From the Back Cover

After the unexpected death of his mother, Paco (Fernando Alves Pinto), an aspiring actor from Sao Paulo, longs to leave his native Brazil. Tired of living in squalor, he accepts a "delivery job" from a shady antique dealer and travels to Lisbon carrying a violin filled with uncut diamonds. But when the exchange goes bad, he finds himself on the run from an underworld thug and in the arms of Alex (Fernanda Torres), a beautiful woman caught up in the Portuguese black market. 100 minutes.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Magic of Cinema Recreated!, January 1, 2004

By 

Abhijoy Gandhi (Philadelphia, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Foreign Land (DVD)

FOREIGN LAND / Brazil-Portugal 1995
13 December 2003 The best part of this film is how much it surprises. It's a B&W film from Brazil and deflates expectation as it starts out almost like a student film - slow, awkward and seemingly uninteresting, with so much of gritty grain that it is initially annoying. Yet the change of pace and the transition into a gripping tale of innocence, love and adventure is so seamless, that only in the end do we realize what sheer cinematic delight we have been privy to.
* Mise-en-scene: Even though it was made in 1995, this film belongs to the highest traditions of 50s Film Noir. Though reminiscent of Welles' Touch of Evil in its narrative style, you've probably never seen a grittier tale, and feel for the characters and their innocence as the plot thickens and the feeling of foreboding grips you.
* The fact that the lead pair comprises unknown faces works for the film, and makes it believable. After all, the feeling of alienation and desperation is easier to ascribe to, to a nobody who has no-where to go.
* Foreign Land communicates a deep underlying political message to Brazilians who were migrating to Europe in the 1980s and the film does a successful job of portraying life outside of Brazil as mean-spirited and dangerous.
* The character development of the boy from struggling artist to bold young man is thoroughly convincing as is the unlikely romance between two desperate people in a strange land. I particularly enjoyed the change in pace of the narrative where it midway meanders off the beaten track and becomes a road-film.
* Cinematography: In the final analysis, the low-brow high chiaroscuro grainy photography works for the film and successfully builds a dark mood that establishes the feeling of evil lurking just around the corner in a foreign land.
* Sound design is effective in creating a nostalgic mood which begs us to ask the protagonists what on earth they are doing in a foreign land when they could have been safely tucked away in beloved Brazil.
I highly recommend this film to any lover of international cinema and particularly to those who feel inspired by gritty, small-time, content driven films with a powerful vision, that dare to challenge the goliaths of our filmmaking factories.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A work of art, July 15, 2003

By 

Sant́ (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Foreign Land (DVD)

"Foreign land" is a film that has made my mind in my late teenage years. The story is alright, but it impresses for the image and sound composition. First, the photography of Walter Carvalho, black&white, Bresson-style. Then, the music, "vapor barato", an anthem of the seventies in Brazil (and the song was not in the film, it became part of it when the director asked Torres - the character Alex - which song she considered important in her life. She was hearing Vapor Barato in her walkman). It's a moody film, and tells much more about the life of the characters (foreigners/expatried), who search for something beyond, than about politics. It's about people, not countries.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Movie, March 26, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Foreign Land (DVD)

One of the best movies in the Brazilian history. It shows the human impact of the Brazilian financial instability in the early 1990s in the every day life of the population using the example of one single individual who get involved with traffic to keep his simple dreams possible.