In 1980, Hector Babenco, Argentinian born though also an important exponent of Brazil's Cinema Novo, made a film entitled Pixote: a lei do mais fraco, released outside Brazil in 1981 as Pixote. The film, based loosely on José Louzeiro's novel Infância dos mortos (1977) and employing children from the favelas of São Paulo as actors, wove together the violent and violated lives of children in a tale that raised questions about human nature as disturbing as those it raised about Brazilian politics. The film's protagonist, Pixote, a young boy of about 10, is detained in a police sweep in the wake of a bungled pickpocketing-cum-murder of a judge. Interned in a reformatory, he is witness to the rape of a young boy, finds that some of his peers are murdered by the police when singled out arbitrarily in revenge for the death of the judge, and practices, along with older boys, mock bank robberies. Pixote eventually flees the reformatory and in the company of friends embarks on a spree of street crime in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Snatching purses and wallets, selling drugs, and (in collusion with a prostitute) robbing half-dressed Johns, the protagonist is at once a young, prepubescent boy eager for affection, companionship, and care and an incensed, gun-toting would-be tough capable of murder.

Pixote became the third most commercially successful Brazilian film (Levine 1997).