Homeless adolescent Pixote finds himself thrown into a nightmarish prison where sadistic guards torture the young inmates. Fleeing with fellow inmate Lilica and her boyfriend, Dito, he journeys to the streets of Rio de Janeiro and becomes enmeshed in an underworld of drugs and violence.

A heart-wrenching and hard-hitting masterpiece, Héctor Babenco’s visceral look at the street kids of São Paulo is a film of indelible images. Reminiscent of Buñuel’s Los olvidados and presaging the grand tragedy of City of God, Pixote has a remarkable naturalism and raw authenticity of its own.