This Brazilian book-based short film fits as much information as possible in its 13 minutes. Most of it is about basic economic connections in random people's everyday life, for example how they buy goods, sell them for more money and use this money to buy food for their families. But apart from this economic context, there are also references to history, agriculture, environment, freedom and society in general. Here and there, it is slightly funny, but as a whole I found this short film fairly forgettable. I am surprised it is so popular and highly rated. Maybe people mistake a fast movie for a good movie. Also the title couldn't be any more random. It looks like a decent student movie and there is nothing really outstanding about it, even taking into account that it was made over 25 years ago. Jorge Furtado was not even 30 when this was made and he has been enjoying a prolific career in the last almost 30 years. I guess he must have improved a lot since then as there is nothing particularly memorable about his work here. Not recommended.

This film is amazing and I consider it the best one I've seen so far. This documentary is not simply about information, it is about conveying a message to the audience and getting them to fully digest the gravity of the director's message. What it does is to take simple information and piece it together in a creative way with cut-out visuals and animation, as well as real-time footage, engaging the audience in a way that is unfamiliar to the pop movie goer. At the same time, Furtado does well to entertain the audience with witty lines and states the obvious to drive into the viewer's mind that we often ignore the obvious, and the problem he eventually highlights is one of them. Kudos. Love it.

Here's a work that definitely proves how exciting and questioning a short movie picture can be.Acting as a director, writer and producer, Jorge Furtado couragely aims a dazzling machinegun at issues as assorted as religion, Holocaust, Brazilian government, poverty, capitalism, and how human intelligence has been used throughout the ages.Using a dialectical method, and narrating the story in a way that "even a Martian would understand", in the words of the author, the film forges a real cinematographical theorem of Brazilian deplorable situation, borrowing as the stage a neighbourhood in the city of Porto Alegre (one of Brazil's most developed ones, by the way). The degrading scenario, however, would apply to any community on the world in which the effects of money (or its lack) on the lives of its inhabitants are more visible.In the movie's touching final take, Furtado destroys the bourgeois concept of Freedom, quoting a line from one of Brazil's greatest poetesses, Cecilia Meirelles, and leaves us wondering whether modern 'civilisation' is as far as the human intellect can take us.

That's the kind of movie you'll see quite by chance, one evening on television. And you will never forget it."Ilha das flores" is the story of a tomato, from the field where it is cultivated to the dustbin, and beyond. It's fun, and, at the same time, it tells you a lot about the economy and the Brazilian society. What is really unique for a documentary is that the story is as pleasant to follow as in a fiction, and the end is one of the more stunning and moving end I have ever seen in a movie.