To the Left of the Father (Portuguese: Lavoura Arcaica) is a 2001 Brazilian drama film produced, written, directed and edited by Luiz Fernando Carvalho, based on the novel of the same name by Raduan Nassar.

When André moves to a seedy boarding house, his older brother Pedro (Leonardo Medeiros), is asked by their mother (Juliana Carneiro da Cunha) to bring him back.

Aiming to maintain the connection with the poetic prose of Raduan Nassar's book, Luiz Fernando Carvalho elected to film without a defined script, based entirely on the actors' improvisations on the theme.

[6][7][8][9] The film's creation and production process was discussed in the book About To the Left of The Father ("Sobre Lavoura Arcaica"), in which the director is interviewed by José Carlos Avellar, Geraldo Sarno, Miguel Pereira, Ivana Bentes, Arnaldo Carrilho and Liliane Heynemann, launched in Portuguese, English and French by the publisher Ateliê Editorial.

[17] The film was acclaimed by the critics of various countries and, according to the French magazine Cahiers du Cinéma, To the Left of the Father is a "barbarous poem verging on hallucination, of extraordinary power".