Hard Times

Hard Times is a Portuguese drama set in the 1980s, adapted from the novel Hard Times by Charles Dickens. The film portrays life in a fictional industrial town called Poco do Mundo, where the lives of several families - from wealthy entrepreneurs to struggling workers - intertwine. Through their daily experiences the story explores social contrasts, oppression, frustrations, conformism and human mediocrity in a modern setting. It observes how ambition, hypocrisy and class tensions shape individuals' hopes and disappointments.