Cast

Dora, played by Fernanda Montenegro

Josué, played by Vinícius De Oliveira

Ana (Josué’s mother), played by Soia Lira

Irene, played by Marília Pêra

Pedrão, played by Otávio Augusto

Moisés (Josué’s half-brother), played by Caio Junqueira

Isaías (Josué’s half-brother), played by Matheus Nachtergaele

Crew

Production Designers: Cassio Amarante, Carla Caffe

Cinematographer: Walter Carvalho

Editors: Isabelle Rathery, Felipe Lacerda

Music: Antonio Pinto, Jacques Morelenbaum

Screenwriters: João Emanuel Carneiro, Marcos Bernstein

Associate Producers: Paulo Brito, Jack Gajos

Executive Producers: Lillian Birnbaum, Thomas Garvin, Donald Ranvaud

Producers: Martine de Clermont-Tonnerre, Arthur Cohn

Director: Walter Salles

Awards

Golden Bear, Berlin International Film Festival, 1999

Silver Condor, Best Foreign Film, Argentinian Film Critics Association, 2000

BAFTA film award, Best Film not in the English Language, 1999

Winner, Golden Globe, Best Foreign Language Film, 1999

Nominee, Best Actress in a Leading Role (Fernanda Montenegro), Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Hollywood, 1999

Winner, Best Screenplay, Sundance Institute International Award ($310,000)

Plot

Film opens with Dora, the letter writer, writing letters for various people in Central Station in Rio de Janeiro. Ana, Josué’s mother, arrives, accompanied by Josué, and asks to write a letter to her absent husband, Jesus, in Estrela do Norte in the backlands of central Brasil. The letter is direct and forceful. We follow Dora, after her day’s work has finished, going home; she is a spinster who has a close friend, also a spinster, who helps Dora decide what to do with the letters. Despite her promise to her clients that she will post the letters, sometimes Dora simply tears them up and sometimes she stores them away in a drawer. Dora is presented as a cynical, unfeeling individual, made so by a life of hard knocks. Ana returns the next day and writes a kinder letter to her absent husband. Soon after writing the letter, Ana is run over by a bus. Josué, now an orphan, begins living in Central Station. He asks Dora to write another letter to his father, Jesus, but she refuses to do so because he has no money. She takes him to a ‘home’, from where she believes he will be taken to the United States to be adopted. She buys a television with the proceeds of her transaction – 1,000 dollars – but her friend becomes suspicious. She says that Josué will probably be killed and his organs sold on the black market.