Rita M. Pestana

The everyday life of a Belo Horizonte lower class neighborhood.

Cássia goes to sleep to the sounds of her alcoholic father and wakes up with the crow of her rooster bred for cockfighting. Her routine obeys a disciplined logic of restlessness and hard work. Between driving her father's taxi and tending their rooster, she is on the verge of breaking out to find a life of her own.

An extraordinary fish subverts the natural laws and terrorizes the popular imagination in Minas Gerais.

Sergio travels to Guinea-Bissau to work for an NGO as an environmental engineer on a road project between the desert and the forest. There, he becomes entangled in an intimate yet unbalanced relationship with two inhabitants of the city, Diara and Gui. As neo-colonial dynamics among the expatriate community unravel, this fragile bond becomes his only refuge from an impending collapse into solitude or barbarism.

Within the beating heart of Alfama and Mouraria, the hoods meet to tell their story. In a blend of authenticity, roots, traditional music and cause and effect philosophy, they lay it all bare

Pilar, a young hotel maid, has her path crossed by Shin, a middle-aged South Korean guest. The plans of both go wrong and, despite everything that separates them, they end up getting closer and establishing a relationship of solidarity.

On a hot summer day, Paloma decides to fulfill her most cherished dream: a traditional wedding in a church with her boyfriend Zé. She is a devoted mother, a hard-working farmhand in a papaya plantation and has been saving to afford the celebration. The priest’s refusal to marry her and Zé will force Paloma to confront the rural society. She suffers violence, betrayal, prejudice and injustice but nothing shakes the faith and determination of this transgender woman.

After a lifetime apart, two childhood friends reunite, now widowed and elderly, in the village where they grew up. As they try to resolve past disagreements, they deal with their families' decision to place them in a nursing home. Knowing that they are nearing the end of their lives, the two friends strive to fulfill their old promise to stay together forever.