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The King’s Brazil Institute at King’s College London is honoured to host the film launch of More Earth Will Fall with co-directors Sam Liebmann and Lee McKarkiel.

Description: More Earth Will Fall is the universal story of the love between one family and of their struggle for a better life. Given extraordinary access over three years, this documentary offers a rare immersive insight into the lives of some of those caught in the middle of Brazil’s poverty and violence.

The film offers a moving and intimate portrait of a family struggling to lead a “normal life”, perched on the hillside in an ‘Area of Risk’ at the top of Rio’s largest and most notorious favelas, Rocinha. Largely forgotten by the state, their community is severely underdeveloped with no building regulation or access to sanitation. All around them the drug gangs, who control the favela, fight it out with the police. Their dream is to have “a home with a bathroom and kitchen” and to be free from the constant violence between invading police and resident drug-traffickers and there is hope on the horizon. 

More Earth Will Fall benefits from the long period of filming and the intimate relationships established by the filmmakers. The audience become ‘insiders’ in the life of a family struggling against the odds to survive and prosper – a perspective that has been absent from often more sensationalist coverage of Brazil, particularly favelas. Whilst the film’s strength lies in the focus on one family’s life in Rocinha, the story echoes the lives of working class people across the globe as they strive to maintain their hope and faith in a better future.

A question and answer opportunity with co-directors Sam Liebmann and Lee McKarkiel will follow the screening of the film. Sam Liebmann has helped direct and edit several human rights based documentaries, including Voices Across the Wall (2007) about life in Israel and Occupied Palestinian Territories, selected for the London International Documentary Festival in 2009. Lee McKarkiel began his filmmaking career in 2002 with Hi8us-South, an award-winning media company based in East London, and has since gone on to work as a professional editor in the independent, commercial and broadcasting filmmaking industry and the participatory media sector (Channel 4, BBC, Current TV, SKY Sports, Burberry).

Official film trailer: https://vimeo.com/256447794

Official film website: http://moreearthwillfall.com/

*Directions to the theatre can be found on this link: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/Cultural/-/Projects/NTLive-Kings-venue-information.aspx

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Event details

Lucas Lecture Theatre (room S-2.18)
Strand Campus
Strand, London, WC2R 2LS