Mangue Beat, a musical and aesthetic movement which emerged in Pernambuco in the 1990s, transformed the visibility of the peripheries and cultural manifestations of the metropolitan area of Recife and placed the state on the map of the world music market with the launching of bands like Chico Science and Nação Zumbi and Mundo Livre S.A. The film experiments with the freedomn of thought of the Mangue using a plural language, which brings togther ideias and ideals, refleting the daring which resulted in the great symbol of the movement: a satellite dish planted in the mud of the estuaries - the Mangue.

Seventy critics and filmmakers discuss cinema around the conflict between the artist and the observer, the creator and the critic. Between 1998 and 2007, Kléber Mendonça Filho recorded testimonies about this relationship in Brazil, the United States and Europe, based on his experience as a critic.

Passages showcases Brazilian films in which the utilisation of artforms and media such as literature, painting, theatre, music, photography, radio and television, functions as a 'passage' to political and social reality.

In 1965, a year after the military coup in Brazil, an oasis of freedom opened in the country's capital. The Brasília Film Festival: a landmark of cultural and political resistance. Its story is that of Brazilian cinema itself.