José de Carvalho

What is the difference between a story and a good story? In this short documentary, ten of the greatest screenwriters in Brazil answer this and other questions, guiding us through the universe of creative writing and all its possibilities.

Around 900 thousand people are trafficked a year for international borders only for sexual exploitation. However, despite all the dangers, young Brazilian women to enter the world of sex tourism, believe that they will change their lives and their dream of finding a Charming Prince. A minority find a great love and get married. The film goes from the Brazilian Northeast to Berlin seeking to understand the sexual as well racial imaginary and power of young southern Cinderellas and northern wolves.

Rachel is a girl, adopted by an upper middle class family, who rebelled at 17 and left her family and studies at a traditional college in Sao Paulo to become a sexy call girl. Shortly after starting work, she decided to write a blog about her experiences. Since some clients thought she looked like a surfer she adopted the name "Surfistinha" which means little surfer girl.

In Copacabana, lesbian photographer Elvis is hired to deliver pizzas in the night shift on her motorcycle. Her first assignment is a delivery to the transgender hairdresser Lady Madonna, whom she falls in love with.

On Alberto's birthday, his daughter Zezé gets engaged. But the party turns sour when he decides to expose his pain and regrets.

A young wizard must create new spells in his magic book before the planets align. His uncle and aunt, powerful mages themselves, help him achieve that. Based on the award-winning Brazilian TV series.

Julia is a 35-year-old English Literature teacher struggling with depression as she tries to get her life back together again after her long, intense love affair with Antonia. Feeling totally abandoned after she and her enigmatic girlfriend broke up, Julia is thrown into a desperate, painful process. Her life and her values have been tinged with unbearable melancholy and her life's measure seems reduced to out-of-focus fragments of her memories. Her inner turmoil and conflicts hamper a process now made necessary - that of readapting to her new life. It is impossible for her to disguise her pain when she attempts to narrate emotions.

When João goes to Brazil in search of a better life, he meets punk music enthusiast Maria and falls in love with her. But his involvement in the local drug trade makes him the target of a vicious drug lord.

On December 31st 1999, destiny brings a fugitive prisoner and a depressed middle class teacher together, as the new millennium approaches bringing hope to everyone.

Maria, a virgin spinster, is trying magical superstitions to find a husband. In her dialogue with the marriage saint, she implores for a companion. Her father offered her as a bride to Saint Djalminha, if the saint saved her during her complicated birth which ended in the death of her mother. Since then Maria has lived this dilemma: revered and loved by the residents and pilgrims that believe she is a miracle worker; she is desperate to live a great love, with a flesh and blood prospect with real passionate desire. She asks for a sign from the heavens, a clue on how to find a crumb of love when a gypsy arrives on scene saying "someone who loves her very much, but she doesn't know will come from afar on an artists' caravan." Maria can't take the solitude she is living anymore and decides "to find Mr. Right," no matter how much it may cost.

A married couple lives peacefully with two children until the husband starts getting violent.

Berenice is a dedicated female taxi driver in Rio de Janeiro. She is consumed by her job and the little free time she has needs to be divided between raising her son Thiago, a teenager exploring his sexuality, and her troubled relationship with her husband Domingos, a police reporter. The scars of the worn-out relationship, ruined by her husband's violent outbursts, have erased her femininity and led her into a great existential emptiness. The murder of Isabelle, a beautiful transgender woman, on Copacabana Beach, ignites her investigative side and transforms her life.

Manuel is a crafty cowboy and swindler who lives to serve his two great loves – his fiancée Das Dô, and his mule Beija-fulô – and his business of selling unsound horses to suckers. The killer Targino arrives in town looking for a horse. Thinking that he is being clever, Manuel sells a sick horse to the assassin. Targino swears that he is going to kill Manuel, and dishonor Das Dô’s reputation after he’s dead. Under pressure, Manuel calls on the magic of Toniquinho das Pedras to protect his body. However, the witchdoctor demands the mule Beija-fulô as payment. Manuel, sees himself in the dilemma between having to choose between his fiancée Das Dô, and the mule, Beija-fulô.

Hortência is a dedicated, dreamy TV reporter, who hopes to stop doing boring reports and become an anchor of the local news. When she learns that the newspaper's anchor is about to be fired, she is excited about the big opportunity, but Vanessa also wants the job. Needing to find a way to secure her new post, Hortência invents a serial killer and starts "investigating" the case.

In Lisbon, Marcelo writes a novel, using the life of his own wife, Beatriz, as the main inspiration to the story. The creative process of the book takes a dangerous path, ultimately compromising the love they feel for each other.