Develops from the life, work and memory of Gianfrancesco Guarnieri, one of the most important names in the history of Brazilian theater, to examine the courses of dramaturgy and politics in the last decades. Guarnieri, besides being a TV star, was also seen as the synthesis of the politically engaged artist in Brazil. His sons, also actors, saw a separation between art, work, and politics. As he investigates the portraits of two generations, grandson and director Francisco aims to understand the place of his own generation in history, in art and the world as a whole.
Caio is 40 years old and lives in the Rio de Janeiro's countryside, where he owns a scrap-metal yard. On Christmas' Eve, he goes to the capital to visit his family and friends. Finally he will be able to meet a man he has not seen for a long time: himself.
The young, pretty and shy Angela Duvall is jailed for murder in some Latin American country. In the prison she gets brutally "initiated" by the other inmates. The nice, honest and handsome prison doctor believe she's innocent and tries to help her out.
Rio de Janeiro police investigator Galvão is pursuing two trails, one professional and one personal. While he tracts a serial killer of taxi-drivers, he also seeks his estranged daughter, Sandra, who he had thrown out of the family home when she adopted a promiscuous teenage lifestyle. Lives intersect when the serial killer, Toninho, a young man of unsavoury connections, befriends Sandra, now an exotic dancer and prostitute living and working in the seamy underside of late 1970s Rio.
Residents of the city of Parada 88, contaminated in 1994 due to the explosion of a chemical industry reactor, live in plastic tunnels, the only way of life that can guarantee their survival, since oxygen, which has become a good consumption, used needs to be reused so as not to generate more expenses. One day, Joaquim wins a lottery that gives him enough money to pay for his and his family's oxygen; but to claim the prize, he'll need to go to the ruins of the factory to collect news from a group of contamination experts adventurers posted there.
