More Earth Will Fall is the universal story of the love between one family and of their struggle for a better life. Given extraordinary access over six years, this documentary offers a rare immersive insight into the lives of some of those caught in the middle of Brazil’s poverty and violence.

The film paints a moving and intimate portrait of a family struggling to lead a “normal life”, perched on the hillside in an ‘Area of Risk’ at the top of Rio’s largest and most notorious favelas, Rocinha. Largely forgotten by the state, their community is severely underdeveloped with no building regulation or access to sanitation. All around them the drug gangs, who control the favela, fight it out with the police.

Their dream is to have “a home with a bathroom and kitchen” and to be free from the constant violence between invading police and resident drug-traffickers and there is hope on the horizon. The government proposes to remove the drug-traffickers for good. It is also relocating families from the Area of Risk where parents Vito, Rosangela and their children, along with thousands of others live in poorly structured wooden huts vulnerable to landslides and fire. But the question remains as to whether these simple promises will offer solutions to a community’s complex problems.

More Earth Will Fall benefits from the long period of filming and the intimate relationships established by the filmmakers. The audience become ‘insiders’ in the life of a family struggling against the odds to survive and prosper – a perspective that has been absent from often more sensationalist coverage of Brazil, particularly favelas. Whilst the film’s strength lies in the focus on one family’s life in Rocinha, the story echoes the lives of working class people across the globe as they strive to maintain their hope and faith in a better future.

More Earth Will Fall is the centre piece of a wider project using film and storytelling to give voice to the hill-top community of Rocinha at a critical time for Brazil and its poorer communities. To learn more about Stories From The Hill, the wider project surrounding the production and distribution of this film or to book a screening of More Earth Will Fall, please contact us.