At Play in the Fields of the Lord is a drama film directed by Héctor Babenco adapted from the 1965 novel of the same name by American author Peter Matthiessen. The screenplay was written by Babenco and Jean-Claude Carrière. The 3-hour, 9-minute story stars Kathy Bates, Daryl Hannah, Tom Berenger, Aidan Quinn, John Lithgow and Tom Waits. A pair of Americans, Lewis Moon and Wolf, become stranded in Mãe de Deus , an outpost in the deep Brazilian Amazon River basin, after their plane runs out of fuel. The local police comandante wants the Niaruna tribe, living upriver, to move... their village so they won't be killed by gold miners moving into the area and cause trouble for him with the provincial government. The commandante cuts a deal with Moon: if he and his fellow mercenary would bomb the Niaruna village from the air and drive them away, they will be given enough gasoline for their airplane to be allowed to leave. Born-again Christian evangelist Martin Quarrier and his wife Hazel arrive with their son Billy, here to spread the Christian gospel to the primitive Niaruna indigenous natives.
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