A film adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel "Hard Times" set in a Portuguese industrial town of the 1980s.
Direction
Botelho's suffocating industrial aesthetic traps you in smoke and sorrow.
Costume
1980s Portuguese workwear as period-piece anachronism — weirdly works.
Director
João Botelho
Henrique Viana
José Grandela
Eunice Muñoz
Mrs. Vilaverde
Ruy Furtado
Tomaz Cremalheira
Isabel de Castro
Teresa Cremalheira
Isabel Ruth
Sebastião's Wife
Lia Gama
Raquel
Inês de Medeiros
Cecilia
Pedro Cabrita Reis
Júlio Vaz Simões
Pedro Hestnes
Bastos
Beatriz Batarda
Young Luisa
Rita Blanco
Luisa Cremalheira (voice)
Francisco Nascimento
António Pinhão Botelho
Cecilia's Son
Luís Lucas
Narrator (voice)
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Botelho made this during Portugal's post-revolutionary economic turmoil, using Dickens to critique IMF austerity policies crushing Portuguese workers.
The anachronistic 1980s setting wasn't laziness — Botelho argued industrial exploitation hadn't changed since Dickens, just the hairstyles.
PT
GB
