Following a newspaper ad, ordinary women tell part of their life stories to director Eduardo Coutinho, which are then re-enacted by actresses, blurring the barriers between truth, fiction and interpretation.

"Master" is the name of a 12-story apartment building in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro's neighborhood for nightlife. Over the course of four weeks in 2001, Eduardo Coutinho's film crew rented one of the 276 apartments and used it as home base to make a film about the building's residents. We get to know the building manager, who succeeded in turning the troubled residence into a family complex within just a few years. Using interviews and a few stolen moments in the corridors of the building, Coutinho explores this world. Most of the building's residents come from the lower middle class and are just getting by, but that's just about the only thing they have in common - so many people, so many stories, sometimes told in a self-confident tone, sometimes with averted eyes. The fact that a film crew is interested in their stories puzzles some of them. Hope, fear, dreams, memories, love and loneliness all appear from behind the doors of this average apartment building.

Following a newspaper ad, ordinary women tell part of their life stories to director Eduardo Coutinho, which are then re-enacted by actresses, blurring the barriers between truth, fiction and interpretation.

After the death of her handsome but good-for-nothing husband Vadinho, Flor, a widow, marries Dr. Teodoro, a respectable gentleman. Hilarity ensues when Vadinho's spirit returns into her life.