Best friends Deco and Naldinho co-own a cargo boat in Brazil's Salvador da Bahia. They give a ride to a sultry prostitute named Karinna, and soon both men fall prey to her considerable sexual charms, pushing the bounds of their friendship to the limit.

After leaving her daughter Jessica in a small town in Pernambuco to be raised by relatives, Val spends the next 13 years working as a nanny to Fabinho in São Paulo. She has financial stability but has to live with the guilt of having not raised Jessica herself. As Fabinho’s university entrance exams approach, Jessica reappears in her life and seems to want to give her mother a second chance. However, Jessica has not been raised to be a servant and her very existence will turn Val’s routine on its head. With precision and humour, the subtle and powerful forces that keep rigid class structures in place and how the youth may just be the ones to shake it all up.

Leandro is a young man frustrated by his job. His master’s thesis is on the military dictatorship in Brazil. That takes him into a search for recently deceased artist Jairo Mendes’ controversial film The Beheading Game, which was censored by Brazilian censors in 1973.

An evening in an old time dance hall in Sao Paulo introduces us to local characters who reminisce about the past, wonder about the future, have fun, flirt, fight and, of course, dance. Its earthy humour and eternal themes of ageing, loneliness and desire is an antidote to grumpy old men and women everywhere.

Ophelia is a 20-year-old girl who lives with her mother and grew up without a father. She suspects that he is Tedesco, a German artist who has just returned to Brazil. Determined to find him, she sends a letter notifying him of her arrival and that she will swim to him from the Santos bridge. Upon learning of the imminent arrival, Tedesco asks Smutter, his great friend, to start following her closely.