Paco and Tonho are illegal Brazilian immigrants in New York. Shy Tonho dreams of being successful, but misses his family and Brazil. Pursued by Immigration Service and later arrested, he is about to be deported. Paco, a rapper and performer, indifferent to all except her career, dreams of hitting the top ten chart. The film shows the relationship of the couple in love mid hope, difficulties, and misencounters in a beautiful and violent metropolis

Querô is an orphan teenager, living alone near the docks in Santos, Brazil. Her mother, a prostitute, died when he was a baby, and he was raised in the bordello where she worked. Believing he rules his own destiny, he refuses to compromise with anyone else, the corrupt policemen always chasing him, the oppressive discipline in the juvenile institution Febem, or the drug dealers who try to lure him. But this independence has a price.

Vado enters the bedroom of prostitute Neusa Suely at dawn in search of money, which he discovers has disappeared. To get rid of Vado's accusations, Neusa claims that the homosexual Velvet, his neighbor, stole the money.

Rio's criminal underworld is run by an unexpected boss: a femme Queen with a taste for power and violence. But heavy lies the crown: what Queen can trust her subjects, however fabulous? When she sets up a stoolie to take the fall for her boy, a plot against Her Majesty arises!

A decadent hooker, her pimp and the bordello's gay cleaner fight over the gigolo's missing money, with the utmost mental cruelty.

Two outcasts fight over a pair of shoes in a run-down boarding-house room.