Seventeen year old Caucasian high school senior Jean Cavalcanti, who attends a well regarded private boys' school, lives a relatively carefree life of moderate privilege in a security monitored and locked and gated big, custom built house in an affluent neighborhood in suburban Rio de Janeiro with his parents, Hugo and Sônia, fourteen year old sister Nathalie, and a houseful of servants including live-in maid Rita, black evangelical cook Noemia, and chauffeur Severino. Hugo and Sônia are too preoccupied with maintaining their upper middle class lifestyle to do much direct parenting with the exception of ensuring that Jean and Nat play their proper roles to the outside world, such as making sure that Jean gets into a good post-secondary program, something that Jean places little real effort. Not doing well on the college entrance exams may be a problem as the government has just implemented a quota system to balance the inherent disadvantages faced by non-Caucasians. Because of his ... Written by Huggo

After being released from prison, Dr. Nise da Silveira is back at work in a psychiatric hospital on the outskirts of Rio de Janeirom where she refuses to employ the new and violent electroshock in the treatment of schizophrenics. Ridiculed by doctors, she is forced to take on the abandoned Sector for Occupational Therapy, where she would start a revolution through paintings, animals and love.