Event

Pixote

Homeless adolescent Pixote (Fernando Ramos Da Silva) finds himself thrown into a juvenile prison in a roundup of São Paulo's street children. The prison is a nightmarish world where sadistic guards torture and murder the young inmates. Fleeing with a transgendered fellow inmate named Lilica (Jorge Juliao) and her boyfriend, Dito (Gilberto Moura), Pixote journeys to the streets of Rio de Janeiro and becomes enmeshed in an underworld of drugs and violence.

"Hector Babencos 1981 film was created in the spirit of Italian neo-realism; his child actors are the real thing, discovered in the streets and essentially playing themselves. The adult characters are mostly played by professional actors, but these performances coming from completely different backgrounds seem to feed from the same desperation. There is no answer to the problem of the millions of homeless children, no remedy, no hope. It is not surprising to learn that Fernando Ramos da Silva, the illiterate 11-year-old who plays Pixote, returned to the streets and was killed by police bullets in 1987." - Roger Ebert