Based on a famous novel by Graciliano Ramos, Vidas sêcas is a chronicle of the day-to-day existence of a family of migrants who trek along the drought-ridden dusty roads of the Northeast's vast sertão, heading to the urban South. They briefly become squatters on a cattle ranch before circumstances force them to move on. And on. Their oppression by landscape and landowners alike is viewed in the stark and simple tones of great tragedy. One has to look to Buñuel's Land Without Bread for a film as pitiless in its refusal to sentimentalize or romanticize poverty, as uncompromising in its documentation of a culture of hunger and despair. In this setting, bathed as it is parched in light, dos Santos finds a cinematic equivalent for the novel's empathic approach to point-of-view for the largely inarticulate Fabiano and Vitória and their children-even for their dog, who, says dos Santos, "has her own universe, her own vision."