1980 ‘Pixote: A Lei do Mais Fraco’ Directed by Héctor Babenco
10-year-old Pixote endures torture, degradation, and corruption at a local youth detention center where two of its members are murdered by policemen who frame Lilica, a 17-year-old trans hustler. Pixote helps Lilica and three other boys escape and they start to make their living by a life of crime which only escalates to more violence and death.
Fernando Ramos da Silva Jorge Julião Gilberto Moura Edilson Lino Zenildo Oliveira Santos Claudio Bernardo Israel Feres David Jose Nilson Martin Dos Santos Marília Pêra Jardel Filho Rubens de Falco Elke Maravilha Tony Tornado Beatriz Segall Emílio Fontana Luiz Serra Ariclê Perez Joe Kantor Isadora de Farias Walter Breda Benedito Corsi Lineu Dias César Pezzuoli Fábio Tomasini
Pixote, la loi du plus faible, Pixote, gatans barn, Пишоте: Закон самого слабого, Pixote, la legge del più debole, Pixote, ta hamini tou São Paulo, Pixote, la ley del más débil, Het Recht van de Zwakste, Pixote: The Law of the Weakest, Asphalt-Haie, Pixote – heikomman laki
Crime, drugs and gangsters Intense violence and sexual transgression Politics and human rights drugs, violence, crime, gritty or cops violence, shock, disturbing, brutal or graphic sexuality, sex, disturbed, unconventional or challenging prison, jail, criminal, convicts or brutal murder, crime, drama, compelling or gripping Show All…
Part of my quest to find the most uncomfortable movie possible is to push my own boundaries, but part of it is that I want to find a work that manages to take the most brutal realities imaginable and make it into art, real, true, perfect art.
This is that movie.
A stunning piece of work that should be essential viewing for anyone who calls themselves a cinephile and are willing to embark on gut-wrenching experiences, Pixote is a criminally under-seen masterpiece.
Hector Babenco turns in one of the more courageous filmmaking efforts I've ever had the chance to witness on screen, depicting the gritty and heartless Brazilian streets of Sao Paulo, where there is no mercy or forgiveness for the orphaned minors who inhabit it. I never felt like I was watching anything false or dramatized during my time with this film, only real life. It helps that Babenco gathered his youngsters from the same areas that the film is depicting, none of them ever acting before or after this.…
It really might be one the best films ever made in Brazil (which ironically enough comes from an Argentinian-born director). It's absolutely worthy of its international prestige by being the perfect amalgamation of the Italian Neorealism that inspired the Cinema Novo movement, the more mainstream-geared pictures of the Retomada and finally a certain Paris-Texas-type sensibility that manages to explores its characters in a manner that feels strikingly literary while utilizing the possibilities of the medium to the fullest. Could see how it might fit the 'poverty aesthetic' rhetoric that questions the morality of exploiting, cinematically, disenfranchised people's tragedies in the name of seemingly well-meaning politically-charged movies that end up doing more harm than good, but I don't think that's the case here.
"Pixote" é uma obra-prima enquanto seus personagens estão no cárcere. Hector Babenco revisita o neorrealismo num conto humanista, mas primal, virulento e violento. Não há muitos pudores, quase nenhum, nem com a nudez dos atores, muitos menores de idade. Esse excesso de liberdade ajuda a tornar seus personagens extremamente envolventes, mesmo que seus intérpretes tenham pouca ou nenhuma experiência. Enquanto os meninos estão presos, "mortos para o mundo", o filme é vivo e pulsante. Quando eles saem, o filme cai abruptamente porque depende muito de uma qualidade de atuação que os protagonistas ainda precisavam desenvolver e a história em si talvez se volte demais para prospeções, enquanto na primeira parte o que interessava era menos a história e mais o…
Devastatingly bleak.
From the opening scenes, it's clear there is a deep rooted undercurrent to the film. A film that is genuinely harrowing as it is such a realistic portrayal of events that take place in the darkest corners of the our world every day.
Corruption, lies and violence are used as tools to repress a part of society that simply cannot defend itself. Politicians and their hired stooges do the bare minimum to keep the problems of this 'scourge of society' away from the voting public, but never really commit to addressing the problem. Decades go by, yet nothing really changes.
Pixote is a horrendously raw representation of the thousands of Brazilian street kids who exist in a lonely…
“I don’t know how to be alone.”
Jesus. this is one of the heaviest movies i’ve ever seen. it’s really worth a watch. every character deserves so much better than they got
Pixote is relentless in delivering its honest, horrifying and woefully uncomfortable portrayal of children living on the streets of São Paulo. It’s a film without any glimmer of hope and something that will leave you uncomfortable and emotionally devastated. Tough but important watch.
this is one of the real films that is nevertheless devastating, painful. there is uniqueness in pixote's journey - character and script - it's a study about paternal loneliness and government abandonment. at first, this feature-film isn't digestible, you need to get involved and be captivated by everything that's being addressed. it's a masterpiece. as no one else could do the way he did, Babenco breaks the limits of brazilian cinema, his works are remarkable and one of the greatest in the movement. viva o cinema brasileiro, 🇧🇷.
I find it mind boggling how this film shows what it does. Still I found it pretty great. The ending did feel a bit too incomplete for my taste but some could argue thats the point. Overall this was really disturbing and bleak but I appreciate what it has to say.
Also lilica is a Trans queen ❤
"Pixote: A Lei do Mais Fraco", dirigido pelo saudoso e talentoso Héctor Babenco, é mais um clássico absoluto do nosso cinema brasileiro, é uma obra que carrega toda uma fragilidade assustadora, e faz um retrato cruel em plena ditadura militar, sobre a falta de políticas públicas voltadas para crianças e adolescentes em situação de vulnerabilidade social, tudo é monstrado em tela, em sua forma mais explícita, desigual, suja e desumana possível, a violência aqui não é acobertada, ela é a ponte que liga tudo, o trabalho do elenco é primoroso a entrega dos atores é palpável chega em um nível de realidade impressionante, todos merecem ressalvas pelo desempenho memorável dos personagens. Pixote é uma obra-prima arrebatadora, seja pela sua vulnerabilidade…
What so easily could be exploitation or misery porn is instead a harrowing work of clear intent. This is helped by giving a clear framing at the start: an out of fiction statement to make it clear that what you are seeing may be dramatised, but it is reflective of a social reality.
And so we watch this social reality. This feels like cameras being pointed in the right place, and the camera doesn’t flinch. We are made to watch great discomfort and horror, the plight of these children (especially the titular Pixote) spirals out before us. It is laced with aching tragedy, constant verbal references forward to what they presume will be a better time, but we know won’t be.
As a purely dramatic work, it is uneven and inelegant. This feels by design, though, as it helps it remain a reality rather than a sense of fictive satisfaction.
