Mangue Beat, a musical and aesthetic movement which emerged in Pernambuco in the 1990s, transformed the visibility of the peripheries and cultural manifestations of the metropolitan area of Recife and placed the state on the map of the world music market with the launching of bands like Chico Science and Nação Zumbi and Mundo Livre S.A. The film experiments with the freedomn of thought of the Mangue using a plural language, which brings togther ideias and ideals, refleting the daring which resulted in the great symbol of the movement: a satellite dish planted in the mud of the estuaries - the Mangue.

Passages showcases Brazilian films in which the utilisation of artforms and media such as literature, painting, theatre, music, photography, radio and television, functions as a 'passage' to political and social reality.

In 1965, a year after the military coup in Brazil, an oasis of freedom opened in the country's capital. The Brasília Film Festival: a landmark of cultural and political resistance. Its story is that of Brazilian cinema itself.

Weatherman from a TV network goes back to his hometown, Vale da Rocha, a place in Northeast Brazil, devastated by the drought. He is forced to face the geographic elements and his own memories.

Documentary on the life and times of one of the most prominent Brazilian samba composers, Cartola (Angenor de Oliveira).

A Lebanese photographer living in Brazil in the '30s manages to film the band of Lampião, a legendary Brazilian bandit.

A host of personalities reminisce about the life and work of songwriter, lawyer, and congressman Humberto Teixeira — aka "Baião Doctor" — the author of such classic Brazilian popular songs as "Asa Branca". A musical film about the baião, a movement in Brazilian music in the 1940s and 1950s that was later snowed under by samba and bossa nova.

When the Netuno Circus returns to Fernando de Noronha, it brings back a young man with a turbulent past. Pedro is now Zolah, the human cannonball. When secrets surface, bizarre family reunions rival the circus performances.

It portrays the work of Carlos Filho, Cafi, a photographer from Recife, who for more than 40 years has dedicated himself to recording a large part of the events of dance, theater and Brazilian popular music. Recordings, concerts, tours and rehearsals by important artists passed through Cafi's lens.

A documentarist is convinced by her son to travel to Brazil's Northeast so she can throw his dad ashes at São Francisco river.

Filmmakers Cláudio Assis and Lírio Ferreira go on a journey through the frontier between the states of Pernambuco and Paraíba, Brazil, to show the importance poetry holds in local culture.

The boy runs after the ball. The worker builds concrete dreams between buildings and soccer balls in a lowland field in Recife. The poet receives a word ball, gives a literal stroke and makes an imaginary goal in this film about football, passion and poetry. João Cabral's America goes beyond the four lines of the field or paper, it transcends time and the field; update the memory to the fact that the love of football will not be volatile or ephemeral, neither in defeat nor in victory.

In Pernambuco, a jewel robbery brings together an old group of misfits, with catastrophic results. Watched over by ghosts from the past, each of them will have to find their own way to freedom.

Documentary about the trajectory of the Brazilian rock band Cachorro Grande, created in Porto Alegre, State of Rio Grande do Sul, in 1999 and imploded in São Paulo, the exact year they would have celebrated their 20th anniversary. As is the script of every self-respecting rock band, Cachorro Grande lived and survived amid contrasts and extremes. From being the greatest promise of Brazilian rock’n roll at the beginning of this century, opening shows for the Rolling Stones in Brazil, to going through open fights that shaped the band’s style and created fissures, culminating in the threat of its disbandment.

As a toddler, Hermeto Pascoal made a flute from a pumpkin stalk so he could make music with the birds. His love of the sounds of nature has remained with him throughout his life. They play a major role in the music of the famous Brazilian composer, bandleader, conductor and multi-instrumentalist – known in Brazil as ‘the sorcerer.’