The End of the River – 1947 | 83mins | Drama | B&W

Plot Synopsis

Cut off from his family, Manoel is sent to a slave camp run by Cypriano Dantos, where he meets and falls in love with Teresa. The slaves are treated badly, and many die of disease; Dantos himself becomes a victim of beri-beri. Lisboa leads the survivors to Belem do Para where they find new jobs and better conditions. Manoel and Teresa marry and join Lisboa working a passenger steam boat along the river.

During a trip ashore, Manoel falls in with Tryogen and enrols with the revolutionary Brotherhood of Maritime Workers who find him work, but he is later blacklisted when the corrupt union is discredited. Eventually offered a job at the docks, he is involved in a brawl and kills a man. Defence counsel pleads for mercy, claiming Manoel’s crime is the result of his innocence of the ways of the white man -’The twig in the current has travelled a long way who is guilty? the twig or the current?’ Released, Manoel returns with Chico and Teresa to his simple life at the end of the river.