Pixote (Fernando Ramos da Silva), a 10-year-old runaway boy, is arrested on the streets of São Paulo during a police round-up of homeless people. He is sent to a juvenile reformatory where the boys are only pawns in the criminal, sadistic games of the prison guards and their commander. The prison is a hellish school where Pixote sniffs glue to escape from the constant threats of abuse and rape. Pixote endures torture, degradation and corruption, and two runaways are murdered by policemen who frame Lilica (Jorge Julião), a 17-year-old transvesite hustler. Lilica's lover then conveniently also dies, with some help from the guards.
Soon after, Pixote, Lilica, and Dito (Gilberto Moura) find an opportunity to flee from the prison. They make their living by crime, which only escalates to more violence and death. First they stay at the apartment of Cristal (Tony Tornado), a former lover of Lilica, but when tensions arise they go to Rio for a cocaine drug deal. Unfortunately, they get duped by a showgirl. After some time bumming around the city, Pixote and his friends go to a club for another drug deal. While there, Pixote finds the showgirl that took their drugs and stabs her. They become pimps for the alcoholic prostitute Sueli (Marilia Pera), who is definitely past her prime. The group conspires to rob her johns, but that scheme fails when an American john fights back so they have to shoot him. In the ensuing fight, Pixote accidentally shoots Dito as well. Later, after being rejected by the mother figure of Sueli, Pixote is seen walking down a railway line with a gun in hand, away from the camera, his figure disappearing in the distance.
Though depressing and unlikeable, "Pixote" is an outraged response to the hardships suffered by millions of homeless street kids in Brazil who turn to crime to survive and are exploited by criminal gangs because of a loophole in Brazilian law which forbids the prosecution of minors. Most scandalous of all are the corrupt police officers who participate in the murder of countless street children every year, treating it as a form of "pest control". This gritty portrait of juvenile poverty and street crime in Brazil was shot in documentary fashion and used amateur actors whose real lives strongly resembled those in the film.
After completing the film, Fernando Ramos da Silva sank back into poverty and crime, and was murdered at age 19 in 1987, allegedly by police in São Paulo. His life and death was subsequently dramatized in 1996 by director Jose Joffily in "Who Killed Pixote?" (Quem Matou Pixote?), which showed that despite the outcry created by "Pixote", Brazil has done little to alleviate these conditions. John Neschling composed the music. The screenplay was written by Hector Babenco and Jorge Durán, based on the book "A infância dos mortos" (The Childhood of the Dead Ones) by José Louzeiro. Hector Babenco directed. The English title is "Pixote: The Law of the Weakest". In Portuguese with English subtitles.
