Joe Valente, a luso-american, returns home with the dream of turning molice picking into a real industry. But this will cause misery for those who use the traditional methods.

The tumultuous lives of a woman and her three daughters who used to live in Paris, and are now living in Bairro Alto.

Pedro is a young agricultural worker who gets caught in the middle of a fight between two families, kills a man and escapes to the capital. He can't find work,resorts to begging, but keeps his mountaineer pride. He starts a new life with a prostitute who is nice to him, but nothing works. He returns home, and alone, and now he finds life there is sad as well.