The man from the gas station, a middle-aged scientist called Marcelo (Wagner Moura), reaches his home town of Recife, on Brazil’s northeastern coast, during Carnaval, and he finds the city in a state of festive agitation. Arriving at the apartment building where he’ll be hiding out, he gets immediately soaked by gleeful kids with improvised water guns. But the sombre stakes of his trip quickly become clear when, moments later, he’s welcomed by Sebastiana (Tânia Maria), the den mother of the safe house, where she’s lodging others in similar circumstances. Sebastiana discloses her sympathies at once, asking him whether he had trouble en route with “the pigs.” Seventy-seven years old and a voluble, plainspoken, fiercely principled rebel fixer, she introduces Marcelo, who’s a widower, to a group of new neighbors, especially a woman named Cláudia (Hermila Guedes), a professor of dentistry, with whom Sebastiana instantly tries to pair him off. Then, when the neighbors are out of sight, she gives him some money, plus instructions for his new life, expressing her commitment to his cause with a furtive zipping of her lips.journey-inline-newsletterinline-newsletter