About the life and adventures of a gang of abandoned street kids known as "Capitães da Areia" (Captains of the Sands), in Salvador, Bahia, during the 1950s.

In Pau Brasil, a small, lost village in the heart of Brazil, the families of Joaquim and Nives live side by side. Despite living in the same perverse structure of social oppression, they deal with life in radically different ways.