Best movies like A Volta do Filho Pródigo

On a scorching summer day in Rio de Janeiro, five impoverished black boys venture out of their favela to peddle peanuts throughout the bustling city. As they navigate the various districts of Rio, they bear witness to a series of unfortunate events and encounters, unfolding a vivid tapestry of urban life in Rio de Janeiro during that period. These true misadventures shed light on the gritty reality of the city, unveiling its vibrant urban tapestry.

After receiving a strange picture postcard, Marina knows there’s nothing else to it but to return to Rio de Janeiro, the beautiful city that here seems threatening and almost enchanting.

The third episode of the Cities of Love franchise, Rio, I Love You is an anthology, created by 10 visionary directors from across the globe. The story line of each segment focuses on an encounter of love in a different neighborhood of the city, demonstrating the distinctive qualities and character of that location. The film serves to bridge gaps between cultures, educating and entertaining the audience, while celebrating unique and universal expressions of love.

Lisbela is a young woman who loves going to the movies. Leléu is a con man, going from town to town selling all sort of things and performing as master of ceremonies for some cheesy numbers, such as the woman who gets transformed into a gorilla. He gets involved with Linaura, a sexy and beautiful woman who happens to be the wife of the most frightening hitman of the place. The hitman finds out his wife's affair and goes after Leléu, who has to leave in a hurry. In another town, he meets and falls instantly in love with Lisbela, who is engaged to Douglas, a hillbilly who tries hard to pass for a cosmopolitan Rio de Janeiro dweller.

The story of Fabio and his partner as they embark on a journey towards a little known national beauty pageant which mobilizes the lives of hundreds of guys around the country - all pursuing the dream of being crowned Brazil's most beautiful girl.

During the Carnival, in Niterói, the son of a Lira do Delírio nightclub dancer is kidnapped. With the help of a journalist friend, she dives into Rio de Janeiro's underworld and meet all kind of criminals. She also goes back in time, to a past carnival, where she thinks she might pin-point the culprit among a group of people.

Romão, illiterate and unemployed, feels destiny drawing him on an odyssey to Rio de Janeiro in pursuit of a job and a decent life. A family of seven journeys 2,000 miles across the hinterlands of Brazil on bicycles. Along the way, the story explores the inner dynamics of a family facing a great challenge with the courage to pursue dreams.

Bossa Nova is a romantic comedy that enfolds many love convergences and divergences, in today’s Rio de Janeiro. It’s in the city’s “useless landscape” that the lonely hearts of nine characters will cross destinies and they’ll discover new passions. The meeting place for these journeys is a charming English teacher, Mary Ann Simpson, former airline stewardess, who’s been living in Rio for two years, since she became a widow, and the newly separated Pedro Paulo. They approach each other without a hint that their lives will be linked by many characters and incidents.

Paulo works as a high school literature teacher, his wife Teresa is a local shopkeeper, and their daughter Bel is still in school. They live in a rented flat in Saens Peña Square, in the heart of Tijuca, a neighborhood in the North Zone of Rio de Janeiro. An unexpected and alluring job offer may have a profound effect on the routine of this family and even jeopardize a 20-year marriage.

Luiz Gonzaga decides to change his destiny and leaves his childhood home for the big city to overcome a romance. When he arrives, he meets a woman he falls in love with, the Odaleia (Nanda Costa). After the birth of his son and his wife's health complications, he decides to return to the road to ensure a better future for his son. He has a friend in Rio de Janeiro and with him leaves the little one and heads to Brazil. He didn't imagine that this distance between them would develop into a complicated relationship, enhanced by the strong personalities of both. Based on conversations between father and son, this is the story of Luiz Gonzaga, a singer and accordion player known as Rei do Baião or Gonzagão.

In Rio de Janeiro, the forty and something years old Mercedes (Lília Cabral) goes to the psychoanalyst and tells the story of her life since she was a girl and lost her mother. Along the three years of analysis, her life changes and she divorces from her husband Gustavo (José Mayer) and has love affairs with the younger Theo (Reynaldo Gianecchini)

Based on true events in Rio de Janeiro, in 1960, when a gang having the infamous outlaw Tião Medonho as a leader performed a sensational railroad hold-up on a train carrying a small fortune.

An uplifting feature documentary highlighting the transformative power of art and the beauty of the human spirit. Top-selling contemporary artist Vik Muniz takes us on an emotional journey from Jardim Gramacho, the world's largest landfill on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, to the heights of international art stardom. Vik collaborates with the brilliant catadores, pickers of recyclable materials, true Shakespearean characters who live and work in the garbage quoting Machiavelli and showing us how to recycle ourselves.

Afro-Brazilian poet and politician, the legendary Carlos Marighella. Driven to fight against the erosion of civil and human rights following the CIA-backed military coup of 1964 and the brutal, racist right-wing dictatorship that followed, the revolutionary leaves behind his wife and son to take up arms, becoming a notorious enemy to the power structure.

In the 1990s, two brothers were accused of murdering eight women, one man and one child in the Serra dos Órgãos region. In the eyes of the suspects, Sergeant Téo realizes that the trial of the press, police and local society is fundamentally racist, and begins to have doubts about the conviction of one of them. Based on a true story, the film is a work of fiction about the famous case of the "Necrophil Brothers."

Cássia Eller Rejane. Cássia Eller. Cássia. A powerful restless force on stage, shined herself out of it. One of the greats of Brazilian music, Cássia Eller marked the 1990s and shocked the country with her early death in 2001. A film about the singer, the mother, the woman who exposed her personal life and broke barriers, leaving a beautiful social and artistic legacy.

The pop band Slavabody Disco Disco Boys, a fever among girls from all over Brazil, announces that it will play in Rio de Janeiro. Gabi, Manu and Ritinha will do everything they can to watch the show far from the city where they live.

Marquinhos is in his early 20s and lives in Copacabana with his petits bourgeois parents and older brother. He doesn't have a job, he doesn't go to school, he just lives on the spur of the moment, watches TV, plays soccer on the beach by day and goes out with his mates by night. He meets Irene, a 40 year-old woman and they have a love affair that is going to change his life - for a while.

Tatá is a typical Rio de Janeiro guy, easy living, hedonistic, living in an apartment in one of those buildings where everything goes, in Copacabana, near the beach. One day a beautiful new neighbor, Teresa, moves into the apartment in front of his, and he falls in love.

Rio de Janeiro, in the period in which the Police Pacification Units (PPUs) were beginning to be deployed in the city. Edna (Lilia Cabral) is the mother of Julio (Pedro Nercessian) and Silvio (Fiuk). One day she wakes up desperate to see that Julio just disappeared!

Two ladykillers living in Rio de Janeiro know no limits when courting a beautiful woman. A problem arises when one of them starts coming on to a girl, not knowing she's his buddy's daughter.

The story of the famous "Polacas", Jewish women deceived into prostitution in Rio de Janeiro in the early 1900's. Ricardo interviews Mrs. Mira, who struggles to bring back memories from her mother's past as a Polaca.

Man leaves his family behind and moves to Nova Iguaçu, a poor and violent city in the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. He tries to rebuild his life, but falls in love with a woman who despises him, which drives him mad.

Teenager Joana feeds her soul with literature and rock. In 1979, when amnesty is granted in Brazil, she's forced to move with her family from Paris back to the country she barely remembers. Back in the city she was born in, and where her father was forcedly disappeared, she recovers pieces of memory from a fragmented childhood in Rio de Janeiro. Not everything is real, not everything is imagination. And as she remembers, Joana must write her own story in the present tense.

Three young Brazilian try to help a terminally ill woman who lives in the slums of Rio de Janeiro. Their youthful idealism is shattered with the cruel reality of police brutality.

Apolônio Brasil was a pianist at a famous nightclub in Rio de Janeiro, from the 1950s until his untimely death. Quite a character, Apolônio was loved by women and idolized by his audience and friends. His contagious joy attracts the attention of American scientist Dr. Boris Lewitsky, who comes to Brazil in order to interview Apolônio's close friends and make them a most unusual offer concerning the remains of the late musician.

A group of friends come of age during the political turmoil that plagued Brazil in the 1960's and 70's. Together, these musicians form a band called "Os Desafinados" and become a part of the groundbreaking Brazilian musical movement called Bossa Nova

Quartet from Northeast Brazil arrive in Rio de Janeiro, to try their luck in the big city.

Rio de Janeiro. Confronted with the violence that exists in the favela where he lives, Tiago sees the only way out to become a soccer player and, in this way, help his family to have a better life. Although he is the best player in his neighborhood and the chances of being discovered by a scout are good, he faces a number of problems. One of them is Tubarão, the leader of the most powerful gang in the favela, who wants Tiago to work for him as a drug dealer. To complicate matters even more, Tiago falls in love with Juliana, Tubarão's sister.

Marquinhos (Lúcio Andrey) lives in the Rocinha favela, in the city of Rio de Janeiro. He gets involved with Débora (Priscila Assum), a young woman from the upper middle class with whom she starts to face adult life and several difficulties that try to separate them.

Meus Amores no Rio is a thin romantic comedy about a young woman (Suzana Freyre) who wins a trip to Rio de Janeiro on a television quiz show. Being both young and attractive and excited about the city, she manages to enchant three different men. The first man to fall for her is a pilot, and then there is the journalist, and then a womanizer.... Each encounter reveals more of the city and its impressive vistas, a fourth important protagonist in this film.

Malu — a mercurial, unemployed actress living with her conservative mother in a precarious house in a Rio de Janeiro slum — tries to deal with her strained relationship with her own adult daughter while surviving on memories of her glorious artistic past.