Best movies like Mandacaru Vermelho

Zé is a very poor man whose most prized possession is his donkey. When his donkey falls terminally ill, Zé makes a promise to Saint Bárbara: If his donkey recovers, he will carry a cross - like Jesus - all the way from his city to Saint Bárbara's church, in the state capital. Upon the recovery of his donkey, Zé leaves on his journey. He makes it to the church, but the priest refuses to accept the cross once he discovers the context of Zé's promise.

Situated just above the awe-inspiring Ipanema beach in Rio is the Cantagalo slum. Every day, floods of Cantagalo residents make their way down the mountain, only to disappear into their surroundings as part of the invisible working-class that cleans apartments, works in restaurants, and sells food along the scenic, sun-drenched shores. Young Dé (Thiago Martins) is just such a man. Dé lives with his mother Bernadette (Cyria Coentro) in a cramped Cantagalo apartment, selling hot dogs on the beach in order to make the rent. His brother Beto was killed when Dé was just a young boy, and his adopted brother Carlão (Rocco Pitanga) has been jailed for a robbery that he didn't commit. One day, while working on the beach, Dé meets Nina (Vitória Frate). Nina is the only child of a successful lawyer named Evandro (Paulo César Grande), who's none to happy to discover that his daughter is dating a member of the lower class. How...

In a dark and decadent area of São Paulo, the exiled Americans Rosso and his son Paul own a brothel. Paul is a compulsive gambler addicted in cocaine and his father is married with the former prostitute Angie, and they have a little son. When a client is killed by his wife in their establishment, they find a suitcase with drugs.

A young man upsets his Punjabi family when he falls in love with an Irish schoolteacher.

Set in 1943 in Scotland during World War II. Janie is a young housewife married to a man named Dougal, 15 years her senior. As part of a war rehabilitation program, Janie and Dougal welcome three Italian POWs to work on their farm. Soon, Janie falls in love with one of them...

Family drama about a young farm girl, suddenly orphaned, who must give up her beloved dog when she's sent to live with her aunt in Boston.

Lisbela is a young woman who loves going to the movies. Leléu is a con man, going from town to town selling all sort of things and performing as master of ceremonies for some cheesy numbers, such as the woman who gets transformed into a gorilla. He gets involved with Linaura, a sexy and beautiful woman who happens to be the wife of the most frightening hitman of the place. The hitman finds out his wife's affair and goes after Leléu, who has to leave in a hurry. In another town, he meets and falls instantly in love with Lisbela, who is engaged to Douglas, a hillbilly who tries hard to pass for a cosmopolitan Rio de Janeiro dweller.

Two men, working as professional boxers, come to blows when their careers each begin to take opposite momentum.

Young man, of Portuguese nobility ascendancy, starts working in a rubber plantation in the Amazon, in 1912, and falls in love with pretty Yayá, a married woman.

Champion boxer Jimmy Dolan has cultivated a wholesome image for himself, but he's a boozer and womanizer behind the scenes. Intoxicated at a party, he punches a reporter who threatens to expose his hypocrisy, and accidentally kills him. Dolan panics and skips town, winding up on a farm that serves as a home for disabled children run by kindhearted Peggy. As the cynical Dolan falls for Peggy, he begins to change his ways.

American couple move to the State of Ceará, Brazil, in the 1930s. The husband is looking for oil. His beautiful wife, Donna, soon falls in love with a rude but charming fisherman. The forbidden romance may destroy her marriage and upset the morals of the small village where they live.

Donato fails in his attempt to save a drowning man, and meets one of the man's friends. He decides to start his life over, but pieces of his past keep coming after him.

A true story that comically depicts the relationship between an ordinary woman and her three husbands, who live in the same house in a poor and arid small village of the Brazilian northeast.

An unsophisticated young woman from the Mississippi swamps falls in love with an unconventional southern gentleman.

Working incognito at his rich dad's company to test his own merits, Teto falls for Paula and tells her he grew up poor, a lie that spins out of control.

Pregnant out of wedlock, an educated young woman is pressured by her father into an arranged marriage with a lonely farmer in this drama set during WWII.

About the life and adventures of a gang of abandoned street kids known as "Capitães da Areia" (Captains of the Sands), in Salvador, Bahia, during the 1950s.

After she leaves her cheating husband, Susan Reed embarks on a cross-country road trip where she falls victim to a series of mishaps that land her behind bars in the redneck Macon County Jail. Once inside, she's subjected to endless acts of brutality from the guards and inmates alike. Things go from bad to worse when she's forced to defend herself against a rapist with tragic results. No longer truly "innocent," when the opportunity arises Susan flees with fellow prisoner Coley.

An escaped circus lion provides the impetus for the meeting of carnival owner Nick Coster and Matt Varney, a small-town man who suddenly becomes a lion tamer when he manages to subdue the big cat. While acclimating to carnival life, Matt begins a romance with Nick's sister, Mary, causing tension between Matt and Nick. The latter must also juggle his stormy relationship with glamorous circus star Flo Lorraine.

Helena, a criminal's daughter, was raised in a boarding school. When the priest who was her teacher is killed by a group of outlaws, Helena and her female friends assemble in a strange gang of female bandits, wandering Northeast Brazil and forcing the men they capture to have sex with them.

Cowboy escaping from the drought in the Northeast Brazil meets some officers led by a cruel lieutenant, whose main objective was to catch organized outlaws and invade the small town of Juazeiro. They arrest and torture him, hoping he would tell them the whereabouts of Padre Cícero, a prominent religious leader of the place. But he manages to escape and arrives in Juazeiro. The police invade the city and arrest the believers who were celebrating a party for Padre Cícero.

Somewhere in Rio Grande do Norte's countryside, Brazil, the wealthy farmer Elói Dantas (Álvaro Guimarães) decides to increase his patrimony even further by exploiting ores. To do this, he tries to appropriate the small site of Antônio Vaqueiro (José Marinho). Desperate, Antônio rushes to the aid of the gypsy healer Maria dos Remédios (Luiza Maranhão) and the poet and dreamer Tião Poeta (Lenicio Queirogo) to face the greed of Elói.

Lucas is a young man who lives with his religious aunt Lourdes in a quiet country town. He helps his aunt by holding religious meetings with the ladies of the area, in the living room, playing biblical songs on the keyboard. This quiet life will end as soon as the charitable aunt communicates the arrival of another nephew, Mario, just out of jail. The clash of reality between the cousins ends up causing unusual situations, and an unexpected attraction among the boys.

A teenager, recently in trouble with the police, is sent to live with his aunt and uncle on their Kentucky farm in order to rediscover life's values.

Aimée is a millionaire influencer who has all her family's assets blocked, except for a farm in the countryside of Ceará that she inherited from her grandfather. She leaves for the hinterland in an attempt to sell the property, but ashamed of the new reality, she invents that she will take a "sabbatical period" for a year. Thus, she will have to deal with her new life and sustain the lie on social media.

Desimar is the owner of Inferninho, a dark and run-down bar that is refuge of dreams and fantasies. Her dream is to leave everything behind and go away to any distant land, as far as possible from that place. Falling in love with Jarbas, the handsome sailor that arrives at the bar, dreaming of finding home, will completely change her life and the lives of the bar employees: Luizianne, the singer; Rabbit, the waiter; and Caixa-Preta, the cleaning lady.

Three criminals escape from prison and break in a seaside house to wait for the getaway boat. They subdue four aspirant actresses and three men and rape and torture them. One of the escapees is an idealistic political prisoner that falls in love with Letícia. When the violent Jorge kills a woman camped on the beach, the police investigate the area.

Returning early from his vacation after the Carnival period to investigate the murder of a young French tourist, Breno Wanderley is faced with possible reflections of his own history from which he cannot escape. Between Ash Wednesday and post-Carnival Sunday, Breno tries to unravel the crime and sees in his son, also called Breno, a chance to reinvent himself in a broken and sullen city.​

The psychology and life of Brazilian hitmen, common in the Northeast part of the country. In this particular case, the story revolves around a young and idealistic politician from Salvador, whom the enemies are eager to eliminate.

In northern Brazil, Hermila patiently waits for her husband. However, he has abandoned her. Sexy, restless and resolute, she raffles off "a night in paradise" with herself. This beautifully-shot portrait doesn't shy away from the burdens of a young scarred woman, but it also celebrates her courage to live according to her own rules.

Jennie is a twelve-year-old girl living with her parents in extremely rural mountain country. Her schoolteacher, Miss Carol, though a mountain girl herself, has gone off to be educated and returned in hopes of stopping the tradition of child marriage which permeates the culture. Jennie's father Ira is a good man who tries to protect Miss Carol from the men who threaten her if she doesn't call off her crusade. One of these men, Jake Bolby, has his eye on little Jennie and plots to make her his bride. NOTE: the actress playing Jennie was 14 years old when she made this film, and appears topless in a couple of shots.

José Renato, a 35-year-old geologist, is sent out on a solitary expedition to the hinterlands of northeastern Brazil. The purpose of the trip is to assess possible routes for a canal that will connect the area with the only major river in the region. As the field trip progresses, it becomes clear that Renato shares with those places the same emptiness, sense of abandonment and isolation.

Two workers in a coffee plantation, a young and an old man, are fired by the farm's foreman. But the young man saves the life of the landlord's daughter and both men are readmitted. The girl and her saviour fall in love and the foreman tries to kill the young guy, but ends up dying. Later the youth finds out that the foreman was responsible for his mother's death.

Miguel —alias Tibars, alias “Djon África,” born and raised in Portugal— is a kindhearted Rastafarian who loves women and lives a carefree life. Until one day a stranger tells him he's the spitting image of his father, “a player and a crook.” His father, whom he never even knew! This intriguing discovery makes him change tack. Particularly when his grandmother, who always took care of him, finally tells him how his father was in prison; how sad Miguel was as a toddler when he couldn't see him; how his father was banished to Cape Verde. Miguel goes there to visit him. Who is this man?