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Mood:
- BleakDisturbingRough
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Plot:
- Juvenile DelinquencySocial MisfitsDown on Your LuckSocial DecayLife is a BitchSocietyYouthProstitute more...
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Genres:
- DramaForeign
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Time/Period:
- 20th Century80s
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Place:
- BrazilSouth AmericaUrban Ghetto
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Praise:
- Award WinnerCritically AcclaimedEssentialMasterpiece
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Based on:
- Based on Book
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Attitudes:
- SeriousRealistic
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Flag:
- Drugs/AlcoholNudityViolent Content
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Pixote, 1981
Portuguese
Brazil
Profile of Pixote
Pixote can be described as bleak, disturbing, and rough. The plot revolves around juvenile delinquency, social decay, and being down on your luck. The main genres are drama and foreign. In approach, Pixote is serious and realistic. It is set, at least in part, in an urban ghetto. It is located in Brazil. Pixote takes place in the 1980s. It is based on a book. The movie has received attention for being a masterpiece, essential viewing, and an award winner. Note that Pixote involves drugs/alcohol, nudity, and violent content.
Summary of Pixote
Hector Babenco's scathing and heartbreaking story of Pixote (Fernando Ramos Da Silva), a sweet-looking streetwise 10-year-old boy who is one of the three million homeless children living on the streets of São Paolo, Brazil, is based on the novel INFANCIA DOS MORTOS by José Louzeiro. Forced to endure brutal conditions at a prisonlike reform school, Pixote befriends Lilica (Jorge Juliano), an older transvestite; her boyfriend, Dito (Gilberto Moura); and young charmer Chico (Edilson Lino). Together the four escape the reform school and struggle to survive in a desolate world of poverty and violence. Traveling in the underworlds of São Paolo and Rio, the makeshift family of boys turn to a lives of petty crime to support themselves. Homeless, the boys are forced to endure hunger and extreme danger as they begin dealing drugs and eventually end up working with Sueli, a burnt-out prostitute (Marília Pêra in a devastatingly powerful performance) who seduces her johns while the boys rob them at gunpoint.
This gritty and painful examination of Brazil's forgotten children is reminiscent of Luis Buñuel's film about urban poverty and juvenile delinquency, LOS OLVIDADOS, while the character of Pixote, played by real-life homeless boy Da Silva, is a direct descendant of François Truffaut's unforgettable protagonist Antoine Doinel from THE 400 BLOWS. Babenco's use of a largely nonprofessional cast and a powerful story combines to make one of the most haunting portrayals of childhood ever filmed.
Furthering the film's relevance is the sad note that Da Silva died only a few years after starring in the film--shot by police who mistook him for a criminal. In 1996, WHO KILLED PIXOTE?, a documentary about the life and death of Fernando Ramos Da Silva, was released.
Details
| Language: | Portuguese |
| Country: | Brazil |
| Release date: | 5 May 1981 |
| Runtime: | 128 min |
Cast and Crew
as Pixote
as Sueli
Photos
