About Brazil's abandoned children.

It is a docu-drama in the tradition of Bunuel's Los Olvidados, so relentless in its depiction of life in the institutions and on the streets of So Paulo that it defies pity. Babenco takes representiatives of Brazil's deprived children (of whom three million are homeless) and presents their bleak lives using actual kids from the city's shanty towns. The hero is Pixote, a young-old boy, dragged into a police station after a round-up and sent to a reform school run by an outwardly kindly but totally corrupt regime. Pixote witnesses rape, beatings and death, which are unflinchingly portrayed as an everyday occurrence largely ignored - possibly condoned - by the authorities. In one case his friend is beaten to death by the police themselves. He escapes, turns to theft and becomes part of a gang living off a prostitute and, eventually, a killer. He's 10, with no future.

Due to the impressive interpretation by Fernando Ramos da Silva (10 years old at the time of filming; assassinated by the police in 1987), discovered in the suburbs of São Paulo, the film was a worldwide success receiving various international prizes.
It was considered best foreign film by the Los Angeles and New York Art Critics Associations (1981) and Marília Pêra was considered Actress of the Year by the U.S. National Society of Cinema Critics. At the end of the eighties, PIXOTE was chosen one of the decades most remarkable films by the "American Film" magazine together with Akiro Kurosawa's RAN and Ingmar Bergman's FANNY & ALEXANDRE.


DVD available (Carlotta Films)