Jorginho, his white friend Rico, Lici and Paulinho are homeless best friends living in a slum in a hill in Copacabana. They spend their hopeless life playing with kite; trying to survive getting food from the street market or the fishermen; learning how to pickpocket; working on the streets polishing shoes. Rico escaped from an institution in Caxambu that symbolizes hell on Earth for them. When he gets ill, he decides to return to the place because he does not want to die on the streets.

Through the eyes of ten-year-old Alexander, we witness the delights and conflicts of the Ekdahl family, a sprawling bourgeois clan in turn-of-the-twentieth-century Sweden.

The plot revolves around a sadistic doctor, a macabre gravedigger, an innocent girl, sabotage, sex and violent death. The beautiful Vivi Sander is living a rough life and is deeply in debt. She tries to force her family to sell the house to make ends meet. Vivi's car crash after a sabotage. She is injured and brought to a medical center where she meets the perverted Dr. Wester.