Synopsis
Featuring the marginalized lives in a harsh Brazilian landscape where the poor and vulnerable are easily forgotten.The traumatic past of 63-year-old Estamira, a schizophrenic mother of three, is reconstructed from her anecdotes and commentaries reveals a life beset by rape, infidelities and indifference. Solace now comes in the form of a living eked out on the giant Jardim Gramacho refuge heap where she salvages debris from the waste discarded by the society around her. Estamira harbors few illusions about the world but her commandments, missives, treatises, rants and raves provide a compelling commentary on her present, past and future. Aware of her demons and contradictions she is a wily prophet of the slums, a Mother Courage for our times whose story is both heartbreaking and impressively defiant.