Filmed in 2010, the movie Hard Labor finally received a limited art house release in the United States in late 2015.
In Hard Labor a middle-class couple slowly succumbs to the allures of entrepreneurship—and the horrors of a schizophrenic job market. As Helena (Helena Albergaria) gets ready to start her own business (a small grocery store), her white-collar husband Otávio (Marat Descartes) is let go from his job. Determined to stay afloat, Otávio goes on a series of ego-crushing job interviews and begins to adapt to the needs of a new economy. Helena, now the household’s breadwinner, discovers that the building housing her store has a sinister story in its past. Beautifully translating the evanescent forces of cyber-age economics into a Grand Guignol of kitchen-sink sensibilities, HARD LABOR is unlike any other Brazilian film you’ve seen in the last decade.
