José Teles de Magalhães

Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, during the dictatorship of Getúlio Vargas. Outlaw Tonio is involved in a conflict between strikers and the police. His mistress tries to keep him from his companions, but he steals her belongings to help the persecuted. Dissatisfied, she denounces him, compromising him politically.

In Bahia, an educated black man returns to his home fishing village to try and free people from mysticism, in particular the Candomblé religion, which he considers a factor of political and social oppression, with tragic outcome.

Despite being promised to another man, a young orphaned woman falls in love with man working at the farm she lives in , and together they escape. According tradition in Northeast Brazil, her aunt goes after them, in order to kill them for revenge.