Country

Jewell and Gil run a family farm in Iowa. They work constantly and the money never covers the debt. Then the loan is called in and foreclosure becomes real. Gil gives up and closes in on himself; Jewell refuses to, and starts looking for a way to change it alongside the neighbours. Richard Pearce's film is about the American farm crisis of the early eighties, in which thousands of families lost their land. Jessica Lange also backed it as a producer and was among those who testified before Congress about what farmers were facing. What she and Sam Shepard build here describes rural poverty without ever turning it into an appeal for tears.