The film was not popular in the United States due to its socialist context and was banned by Brazil's military regime for the same reason, but became an iconic film in the Soviet Union, where it took part in the 7th Moscow International Film Festival and, although did not win any prize,[1][2] in a few years was widely distributed in movie theaters and was proclaimed "the best foreign film" by Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper in 1974.
In the socialist country, the movie became so well-known that it inspired theater plays, books, special reports on post-Soviet criminal youth etc.[3]
Plot
The film features a street gang of poor homeless youth struggling for existence in Brazil. After letting a girl with her little brother settle in their beach shelter, the gang's inner spirit is gradually reformed as she brings a sense of love and family into their shabby abode. One of the local priests helps the gang at the cost of his clergy career. Police eventually capture the main characters and after their lengthy stay in prison, the girl is terminally ill. Her sudden death is a culmination of the movie, it urges the gang to fight for their rights against the government.
