AllMovie

In 1980, impoverished working-class child actor Fernando Ramos da Silva became the darling of Brazilian cinema after starring in the internationally acclaimed Pixote, a wrenching look at the plight of Rio de Janeiro street urchins forced into criminal lives. With such an auspicious debut, a great career for Ramos da Silva seemed inevitable. Unfortunately, fate and the rigidity of Brazil's social stratus had other, more tragic plans. This biopic tells his sorrowful tale and follows the grim sequence of events that led to his brutal, controversial murder by the police. Ramos da Silva was the seventh in a family of ten. His father died when he was still a child. He got his start acting in a play and was later selected from 1300 other boys to play the role of Pixote. For the role, he received world-wide attention and a small fortune. It was too much for Ramos de Silva and he began to identify too closely with Pixote, it created a schism within the confused boy that he never resolved.