Gritty Action

Brazil, 1960s, City of God. The Tender Trio robs motels and gas trucks. Younger kids watch and learn well...too well. 1970s: Li'l Zé has prospered very well and owns the city. He causes violence and fear as he wipes out rival gangs without mercy. His best friend Bené is the only one to keep him on the good side of sanity. Rocket has watched these two gain power for years, and he wants no part of it. he keeps getting swept up in the madness. All he wants to do is take pictures. 1980s: Things are out of control between the last two remaining gangs...will it ever end? Welcome to the City of God.

It is the 1980s, and fourteen year-old Filipa is spending her vacation at Búzios with her father, Mathias, her alcoholic mother, Clarice, and her two younger siblings in their beach house. When Filipa feels that the relationship of her parents is deteriorating, she snoops in her father's office. There she finds pictures of Mathias with his American lover Angela hidden in a drawer of his desk. When Mathias and Clarice announce to their children that they are not going to live together for a period, the confused Filipa believes that Angela is responsible for the separation of her parents, though she soon discovers that the marriage of Mathias and Clarice is built on a bed of lies.

André, relatively poor, falls in love with Silvia, a neighbor he spies on with a telescope. Falling more and more in love with her, he begins to follow her around the city and realizes she works in a clothing shop. He works in a Xerox place and makes a copy of a brand new $50-bill to buy a dress from her store. This becomes a vice and he begins to photocopy more and more money, until it gets out of control. Things go wrong when he decides that photocopying is not the only way to make money.

Fernando, a journalist, and his friend César join terrorist group MR8 in order to fight Brazilian dictatorial regime during the late sixties. Cesare, however, is wounded and captured during a bank hold up. Fernando then decides to kidnap the American ambassador in Brazil and ask for the release of fifteen political prisoners in exchange for his life.

In the slum of Capão Redondo in São Paulo, the twenty-third anniversary of Marco Aurélio a.k.a. Macu will be celebrated with a "feijoada" (a typical Brazilian dish of black beans and pork) and beers promoted by his mother Dona Sônia and their closest friends. Among the guests are Macu's childhood best friends Jaiminho, who plays soccer in Spain and is waiting to be summoned by the coach to the national team, and Pibe, who has a baby and is living with Macu's former girlfriend Claudia. Macu owes money to the dangerous criminal Serjão and Napão and will host a boy that will be kidnapped by the delinquents in order to pay for his debts. Along the day, Macu stays with Jaiminho and Pibe recalling their childhood together. By the end of the day, Serjão and Napão tell Macu that they have changed their plans and the kid will not be kidnapped, but Jaiminho instead. Further, he shall meet the powerful Dr. Venceslau for further instructions. Now Macu is to be on the horns of a dilemma between his friendship for Jaiminho and the fear for the gang of his slum.

In Johannesburg, a small time criminal, Tsotsi, is a teenager without feelings, hardened by his tough life. After a series of violent gang hits, Tsotsi hijacks a car. However, whilst driving, Tsotsi finds that there is a baby on the back seat. He brings the baby to his house in the slum. The next six days bring about a change in him that couldn't be foreseen.

Adapted from his autobiography, the film recounts the story of Hiroito, The King of Boca do Lixo (a region in downtown São Paulo of the fifties where various nightclubs, strip joints, prostitution, bars, and drugs can be found). Hiroito was a well born bohemian and at the age of 21 was accused for the murder of his father, who was violently stabbed over 40 times with a razor. Hiroito was not charged, however two months after the death of his father, Hiroito bought two guns and moved to Boca do Lixo and became one of the most dangerous criminals of the region.

In 1970, near the World Cup, Daniel Stern and his wife Miriam leaves Belo Horizonte in a hurry and scared with their ten years old son Mauro in their Volkswagen. While traveling to São Paulo, the couple explains Mauro that they will travel on vacation and will leave Mauro with his grandfather Mótel. Daniel promises to return before the first game of the Brazilian National Soccer Team in the Cup. The boy is left in Bom Retiro, a Jewish and Italian neighborhood, and waits for Mótel in front of his apartment. When the next door neighbor Shlomo arrives, he tells the boy that Mótel had just had a heart attack and died. Alone and without knowing where his parents are, the boy is lodged by Shlomo and the Jewish community. Through the young neighbor Hanna, Mauro makes new friends, cheers for the Brazilian team and sees the movement of the police and militaries on the streets while waiting for his parents.

Ali, Kwita, Omar and Boubker are street kids. The daily dose of glue sniffing represents their only escape from reality. Since they left Dib and his gang, they have been living on the portside of Casablanca. They live in constant fear of Dib's revenge. Ali wants to become a sailor - when he was living with his mother, a prostitute, he used to listen to a fairy tale about the sailor who discovered the miracle island with two suns. Instead of finding his island in the dream, Ali and his friends are confronted with Dib's gang. Matters are getting serious.

After Black September's assassination of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972, Prime Minister Golda Meir okays a covert operation to hunt down and kill all involved. A team of five gathers in Switzerland led by Avner, a low-level Mossad techie whose father was a war hero and whose wife is pregnant. It's an expendable team, but relying on paid informants, they track and kill several in Europe and Lebanon. They must constantly look over their shoulders for the CIA, KGB, PLO, and their own sources. As the body count mounts -- with retribution following retribution -- so do questions, doubts, and sleepless nights. Loyalties blur. What does it mean to be a Jew?

In Rio, Máiquel is without prospects. He's philosophical and low-key. When he loses a bet and must dye his hair blond, life changes: he finds new confidence, he asks Cledir, the hairdresser, on a date, and when he's teased by a local tough kid, he murders him. Instead of an arrest, Máiquel's a local hero; the cops look the other way. He and Cledir become lovers, his victim's girlfriend Érica, who's 15, insists that he protect her and moves into his small flat, and job offers come his way from a group of rich men who want to settle scores and get rid of local riff-raff. Where can this business go, and what about the triangle of Cledir, Érica and Máiquel? He just wants to be normal?

"The Baron" wanted to commit the perfect heist involving 3 tons of money and no violence. For this he would need the right people willing to get R$ 2 million to take part in this job. Based on true events, in 2005, 168,000,000 Brazilian Real (almost 80,000,000 US dollars) were stolen from a Brazilian Central Bank (Federal Reserve), making it the biggest peace-time robbery in history. It was perhaps the most audacious bank heist ever.

Honduran teenager Sayra reunites with her father, an opportunity for her to potentially realize her dream of a life in the U.S. Moving to Mexico is the first step in a fateful journey of unexpected events.

The widow piano teacher Lúcia and her unemployed teenage son Rafa move to a poor neighborhood in the periphery of São Paulo after the bankrupting of her pension plan. Rafa a.k.a. Pilot tells his mother that he is going to the movie theater with his friend Beto, but they go to a street racing instead in a car that Beto has stolen in the workshop where he works. While seeking the documents, they find a revolver in the glove compartment. When Rafa hits the car of a black man in a maneuver, he shoots Beto on the chest. Rafa takes the gun and accidentally kills a girl. He is sent to prison and during one visit, Lúcia meets the influent lawyer Ruiva and they befriend each other. Ruiva, who is one of the head of the criminal organization "Party", offers money to the needy Lúcia to help her in minor wrongdoings, such as bringing illegal stuff to the inmates. Meanwhile the leaders of the powerful criminal organization have inner fights; when they are sent to a maximum security prison, they order rebellions in the prisons and havoc on the streets on the Mother's Day. Lúcia gets a remission to Rafa for this day, but the teenager has obligations with the Party.

A chronicle of a real-life bus hijacking in Rio de Janeiro that occurred on June 12, 2000.

In 1997, before the visit of the pope to Rio de Janeiro, Captain Nascimento from BOPE (Special Police Operation Battalion) is assigned to eliminate the risks of the drug dealers in a dangerous slum nearby where the pope intends to be lodged. Captain Nascimento is trying to find a man to replace him because his wife is pregnant and he intends to quit the command and become a trainer of the new recruits. Meanwhile, the two idealistic friends Neto and Matias join the Military Police force expecting to become honest policemen and fight the criminals. However, they see only corruption, lack of competence and stupid bureaucracy in the Military Police, and after a serious incident in the Morro da Babilônia, they decide to join the BOPE. The lives of Capitain Nascimento, Neto and Matias are entwined along the next months, first in the tough training period and then in action against drug dealers. Nascimento believes that Neto could be his substitute, but his impulsive attitudes jeopardizes his choice. Later, the intelligent Matias seems to be the correct choice, but he needs to prove that he has heart.

In the 90's, In Rio de Janeiro, the middle-class João Guilherme Estrella is introduced to the world of drugs consuming maconha and cocaine first and later becoming a drug-dealer with many connections inclusive in Europe. However, he spends all the money he makes in his addiction, parties with clients and friends and travels, never structuring or organizing a network or saving money. When he is arrested, he is sent to the prison first and later to the judicial asylum for treatment, reintegrating to the society. Presently João is a successful musical producer.

The 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 20 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 traveling circus passes through the vast badlands where Tonho's family lives.