Behind The Sun

Walter Salles's follow-up to his breakthrough feature CENTRAL STATION may lack that film's deep emotional resonance, but it does confirm one thing: Salles isn't just one of Brazil's most promising directors — he's a great entertainer. This stirring period drama, based on Albanian novelist Ismail Kadaré's Broken April, has it all: bitter feuds, torrid romance, family tragedy and as much blood, sweat and gunpowder as a Sergio Leone western. Salles and co-writers Sérgio Machado and Karim Aïnouz shift Kadaré's setting from the highlands of Northern Albania to Brazil's forbidding Inhamuns Badlands, circa 1910. There, on a parched, God-forsa...