With its roots in the legends and folk traditions of northeastern Brazil, Black God, White Devil is an epic exorcism of the violence and hunger-fed cultural derangements that have scarred that barren region for centuries. In near-hallucinatory images of astonishing power, based in part on actual incidents, Glauber Rocha depicts the saga of two peasants, Manuel and Rosa, and a charismatic Black beato, or messianic priest, whose authority threatens that of the Catholic Church and local landowners. “Black God, White Devil is the most beautiful thing I have seen in more than a decade, filled with a savage poetry” (Luis Buñuel).