Charcoal

Atmospheric Brazilian thriller with the necessary understated humor about a family in the countryside that is thrown into complete chaos by a mysterious tenant.

In rural Brazil, Irene keeps her family together as best she can. Her husband Jairo earns money by burning charcoal. But when he's out of work, he spends what little he has on booze. The couple's nine-year-old son Jean is a sweet boy who shares a bedroom with his bedridden grandfather Firmino, who has had a stroke and can no longer walk, talk or breathe without supplemental oxygen.

One day, instead of the usual community nurse to replace Firmino's oxygen tank, a health worker named Juracy appears. Juracy immediately takes stock of the family and the burden that Irene in particular bears. She makes a modest proposal: why not 'replace' poor old Firmino with someone who can help the family financially? In other words, she proposes to euthanize the old man and then take in a special kind of tenant: an Argentine criminal named Miguel who faked his own death and needs to stay under the radar for a while. The newcomer subtly plunges the family into complete chaos.