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.

Unemployed, penniless in the big city and after accidentally stealing and killing his landlady, Antonio flees Rio de Janeiro towards Northeast of Brazil to find his mother. On the way he meets a beautiful woman and a pair of criminals.

Weatherman from a TV network goes back to his hometown, Vale da Rocha, a place in Northeast Brazil, devastated by the drought. He is forced to face the geographic elements and his own memories.

Brazilian badlands, April 1910. Tonho is ordered by his father to avenge the death of his older brother. The young man knows that if he commits this crime, his life will be divided in two: the twenty years he has already lived and the few days he has left to live, before the other family avenges their son's death. He is torn between fulfilling his ancestral duty and rebelling against it, urged by his younger brother Pacu. That's when a tiny travelling circus passes through the vast badlands where Tonho's family lives.

Didi, Soró and Tatu in search food and water head for the town of Oróz. On their journey they find a Scarecrow, a man in a metal vat, and later are arrested by a Lion Sheriff.

In the small town of Taperoá João Grilo and confusion Chicó live setting, addressing a sacristan and a humble baker. Everyone lives under the excesses of the bishop, the priest and the major. Until an attack on the city, all die at the hands of the bandit Severino and must stand trial in the sky, which puts everyone before God and the Virgin Mary.

In the 1930s, novelist and politician Graciliano Ramos is accused of being a communist sympathizer. He is then arrested and sent to the Ilha Grande prison, where he experiences the disturbing treatment reserved for common prisoners.

A small poor community called Javé is under threat of being flooded by a new dam that is being built, and the only way to prevent this is to prove the town's historical value. As most of the inhabitants are illiterate, they have no choice but to ask for the help of Antônio Biá, a man who has been ostracized ever since it was discovered that he had sent out letters with lies about their reputations as a way to keep his job in Javé's seldom-used post office. He now has the task of documenting people's memories of how the city was founded, yet each inhabitant has his or her own version of what happened.

Deraldo, a popular poet from Northeast Brazil, arrives in the capital of São Paulo, making a living only from his poetry and pamphlets. All is well until he is mistaken for a multinational worker who killed the boss at a party where he received the title of symbolic worker.