A Lei e a Vida

A young female fugitive escapes from a juvenile institution (the Child Assistance Service) and joins a group of poor beggars with the intention of finding a potential partner to marry in order to avoid her return to that place.

In this documentary Coutinho examines the plight of the people who live off the waste of the Brazilian cities. These people make their living by scavenging the immense urban garbage dumps searching for whatever they can find to sell as well as whatever they can find to eat.

Eduardo Coutinho was filming a movie with the same name in the Northeast of Brazil, in 1964, when there came the military coup. He had to interrupt the project, and came back to it in 1981, looking for the same places and people, showing what had ocurred since then, and trying to gather a family whose patriarch, a political leader fighting for rights of country people, had been murdered.

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.

The daily lives and routine of 37 families living in a huge 12-story building in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro: their drama, aspirations, intimate revelations, loneliness, dreams...

A gang of bandits led by Faustão intervene in a fight between two members of rival families, the Pereiras and the Araújos. Henrique Pereira, son of Colonel Pereira, is wounded in an ambush. Faustão rescues him and demands the father to pay a ransom in exchange for the life of his son. The bandit makes it clear to Henrique that he is not a prisoner and that he is only obeying the law of the backlands. Lucena, a henchman working for the Araújos, finds Faustão and offers twice the amount being asked to the colonel in order to take Henrique as a prisoner, but the bandit refuses the offer. Colonel Henrique pays the ransom, but the son refuses to return home, even being aware of the feud between his family and the Araújos. The young man chooses to join the gang.

Documentary on poor people living in a slum in Rio de Janeiro, on the occasion of New Year's Eve of 1999.

Five segments about the hardships faced by people living in slums on hills in Rio de Janeiro.

A panorama of the Brazilian black experience, starting with the figure of the semi-illiterate popular artist and employee of a salt mine Gabriel Joaquim dos Santos.

Made from interviews with young Brazilian students by filmmaker Eduardo Coutinho before his death (in February 2014), the film seeks to understand how teenagers think, live and dream nowadays. The footage was edited by Coutinho’s longtime partner, film editor Jordana Berg, and the final cut is signed by João Moreira Salles.

Simple, emotionally compelling documentary that delves into the songs that hold meaning in people's lives. It is composed of 18 sessions where the director engages his subjects in conversation about the song they picked. The end product is deeply personal stories about music and its intimate connection to memory, love, loss, self-discovery, regret, death, and life.

After visiting a fortune teller, Zulmira is informed that a blonde woman will threaten her peace. After talking to her husband Toninho, she suspects that her cousin Glorinha may be that blonde.

The documentary tracks 19 hours of broadcasting from several brazilian TV channels making live surfing between channels. The result was edited latter.

In the favelas of Rio de Janeiro of the 1930s, João Francisco dos Santos is several things — son of slaves, ex-convict, thug, homosexual and adopted father for a number of pariahs. João expresses himself on the stage of a cabaret as Madame Satã.

After the death of her handsome but good-for-nothing husband Vadinho, Flor, a widow, marries Dr. Teodoro, a respectable gentleman. Hilarity ensues when Vadinho's spirit returns into her life.

Upon discovering that he is marked for death due to a curse placed on his ancestors, Solano, with Estela's support, embarks on a journey of revelations about his origins.