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.

When straight-laced Jefferson finds out his drug-dealing brother is dead, he returns to São Paulo with his childhood friend to identify the body. The journey raises memories of their shared childhood and poses a choice for their future.

Marco is a lonely handicapped Spanish smuggler, driving through Brazil to sell out his cheap goods. When two bandits assault him and steal his load, he is miraculously saved by Carmo, a beautiful local girl who would rather die than spend another day in the hellhole where she lives. Carmo and Marco will start a lawless, reckless journey, and an intense romance through a breathtaking South American border landscape.

In 1850 the Italian dancer Maria Baderna arrives at Brazil, her fame and the scandals she provokes turns her name in a common expression. The film uses passages supposed to be about her to criticize modern Brazil, the dictatorship period and also a homage to filmmakers like Rogério Sganzerla.

Aurélia is a young black woman who works at a factory and lives in a working-class neighborhood in São Paulo, whose boyfriend Fábio gets involved with a racist neo-nazi group.