Jeckie Brown

2029. In Brazil, poor and black children are marked at birth with an ankle bracelet and have their lives traced because it is assumed that they will, sooner or later, go into crime.

Following a newspaper ad, ordinary women tell part of their life stories to director Eduardo Coutinho, which are then re-enacted by actresses, blurring the barriers between truth, fiction and interpretation.

Vidigal Hill, 1977. A runaway group of bandits engage in a complex love triangle in the brink of the news that the corrupt Rio de Janeiro mayor decided to make everyone move out of Vidigal, aided by police forces.

Situated just above the awe-inspiring Ipanema beach in Rio is the Cantagalo slum. Every day, floods of Cantagalo residents make their way down the mountain, only to disappear into their surroundings as part of the invisible working-class that cleans apartments, works in restaurants, and sells food along the scenic, sun-drenched shores. Young Dé (Thiago Martins) is just such a man. Dé lives with his mother Bernadette (Cyria Coentro) in a cramped Cantagalo apartment, selling hot dogs on the beach in order to make the rent. His brother Beto was killed when Dé was just a young boy, and his adopted brother Carlão (Rocco Pitanga) has been jailed for a robbery that he didn't commit. One day, while working on the beach, Dé meets Nina (Vitória Frate). Nina is the only child of a successful lawyer named Evandro (Paulo César Grande), who's none to happy to discover that his daughter is dating a member of the lower class. How...