Best movies like The Red Light Bandit

André, 19, lives in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and works as a photocopier operator. He likes to see his neighbor Sílvia with a pair of binoculars. She works selling clothes. Becoming attracted to her, he tries to get nearer, and goes to her shop to buy something, but finds out that he can't afford it. So he puts the photocopier to other uses, and begins to envisage fishy schemes to earn some money.

In a dark and decadent area of São Paulo, the exiled Americans Rosso and his son Paul own a brothel. Paul is a compulsive gambler addicted in cocaine and his father is married with the former prostitute Angie, and they have a little son. When a client is killed by his wife in their establishment, they find a suitcase with drugs.

When a doctor decides to carry out an AIDS prevention program inside Latin America’s largest prison: the Casa de Detenção de São Paulo - Carandiru, he discovers the victim of one of the darkest days in Brazilian History when the State of São Paulo’s Military Police, with the excuse for law enforcement, shot to death 111 people. Based on real facts and on the book written by Dráuzio Varella.

Two teenagers decide to attend attend São Paulo's annual Gay Pride Parade, encouraged by one of their uncles, a successful - although closeted - business executive. After witnessing an incident of shocking violence at the parade, the group makes a pact - they all have one year to come out of the closet.

After 40 years in a cell for the mentally ill, Coffin Joe is finally freed. Back on the streets, the sadistic gravedigger is set on fulfilling that for which he was imprisoned: find the woman who can give him the perfect child. During his wanderings through the city of São Paulo he leaves behind a trail of horror as he faces unnatural laws and popular beliefs.

Five maids in São Paulo are observed in this episodic, impressionistic film. The women interact with each other, ride busses, work, and have longings: Rai for a husband, Créo for her lost daughter, Roxane for a career in modeling. Quitéria is naive, a gull for thieves. Cida has a husband and also a lover. While each woman gets what she wishes for (more or less), it doesn't always make things better.

Filmed over a five-year period, Chronically Unfeasible dissects Brazilian problems, using six people who meet in a restaurant in São Paulo as models to illustrate political, sociological and economic disparities between Brazil's upper and lower classes.

After leaving her daughter Jessica in a small town in Pernambuco to be raised by relatives, Val spends the next 13 years working as a nanny to Fabinho in São Paulo. She has financial stability but has to live with the guilt of having not raised Jessica herself. As Fabinho’s university entrance exams approach, Jessica reappears in her life and seems to want to give her mother a second chance. However, Jessica has not been raised to be a servant and her very existence will turn Val’s routine on its head. With precision and humour, the subtle and powerful forces that keep rigid class structures in place and how the youth may just be the ones to shake it all up.

After his mother's sudden death, Socrates, a 15-year-old living on the margins of São Paulo's coast, must survive on his own while coming to terms with his grief.

Former athlete enters an old cinema in São Paulo's decadent city centre and meets an intriguing and mysterious woman, very much like the leading lady on the film. He gets involved with her and her problems and in no time is being accused of a crime.

In Brazil, in 1978, under the dictatorship, the country lives the euphoria of disco fever and the fantasy life of Dancin' Days, a prime time soap. After a fatal incident, Amanda, a high-class prostitute addicted to TV, and her maid Dora, are forced to flee São Paulo to Rio. While Amanda dreams of visiting the Dancin' Days disco, Dora prepares to confront her secret past. Their destinies will eventually intersect with those of João Paulo, a diplomat who feels like a foreigner in his own country, the revolutionary Vicente and his brother Pedro, and the teenager Caio, raised by his grandparents and relying on the support of his friend Mônica as he struggles to be accepted as a gay man. Both youngsters are crazy about disco fever and fascinated by the soap Dancin' Days.

During four years a film crew followed the classified investigations and actions of the São Paulo Anti-Kidnapp Police Force. During this time 386 people were kidnapped in the state of São Paulo and over 1.500 in Brazil.

In the periphery of São Paulo, the pregnant single mother Cleuza works as maid in the apartment of a middle-class family. Each of her sons has a different unknown father: the oldest, Dênis, has a baby son that lives with his mother and he works as motorcycle courier.

Rich executive being threatened by a burglar who had been caught trying to steal his mansion hires a hitman to kill him in prison. But another man is killed instead, leaving a widow and three kids. Full of remorse, he tries to help the family, taking everyone home. Soon, conflicts arise from the impossible coexistence of such contrasting families under the same roof.

It's just another luxury car being stolen on a street in São Paulo... or not. A thief easily gets into the SUV parked on a quiet street, but when he tries to get out, he discovers he is trapped, without water or food.

Rio de Janeiro police investigator Galvão is pursuing two trails, one professional and one personal. While he tracts a serial killer of taxi-drivers, he also seeks his estranged daughter, Sandra, who he had thrown out of the family home when she adopted a promiscuous teenage lifestyle. Lives intersect when the serial killer, Toninho, a young man of unsavoury connections, befriends Sandra, now an exotic dancer and prostitute living and working in the seamy underside of late 1970s Rio.

Cafundó is a 35 mm color film which blends fact with fiction in the life of João de Camargo, a former black slave (1858-1942, Sorocaba, Brazil) who, in his old age, works miracles and devotes himself to assisting others in order to attain his freedom. João de Camargo represents the genesis of religious and cultural syncretism in Brazil.

Bruceuilis, a policeman from the countryside, is assigned to rescue Celestina, a goat considered heritage of his small city, and travels to São Paulo. There, he meets police clerk Trindade, who decides to venture out into the field, even though it is not his specialty.

Adapted from his autobiography, the film recounts the story of Hiroito, The King of Boca do Lixo (a region in downtown São Paulo of the fifties where various nightclubs, strip joints, prostitution, bars, and drugs can be found). Hiroito was a well born bohemian and at the age of 21 was accused for the murder of his father, who was violently stabbed over 40 times with a razor. Hiroito was not charged, however two months after the death of his father, Hiroito bought two guns and moved to Boca do Lixo and became one of the most dangerous criminals of the region.

"The Baron" wanted to commit the perfect heist involving 3 tons of money and no violence. For this he would need the right people willing to get 1 million dollars to take part in this job. Based on true events, in 2005, 168,000,000 Brazilian Real (almost 80,000,000 US dollars) were stolen from a Brazilian Central Bank (Federal Reserve), making it the biggest peace-time robbery in history. It was perhaps the most audacious bank heist ever.

Quinzinho (Matheus Nachtergaele) has a promise to keep: take your child, Neco (Vinicius Miranda), to the city to watch a movie Mazzaropi. They live in a small farm in São Paulo. In this odyssey by the cities of São Paulo, he also leads his wife Zulmira (Gorete Miracles), which part unwillingly, and the donkey Policarpo. On the journey, they find regional peculiarities and undergo magical situations, related to popular belief.

In the city of São Paulo, the routine of gravedigger apprentice Deodato changes when a new working girl arrives at the cemetery. Together, they must re-register the abandoned tombs, but strange events make the apprentice wonder about the consequences of messing with the dead.

Aurélia, a young black woman who works at a factory and lives in a working-class neighborhood in São Paulo, is seeing Fábio Tavares, who gets involved with a racist neo-nazi group.

Filming of the historical montage of Oswald de Andrade's play, where decadent millionaires, depraved children, corrupt and implacable capitalists are the characters interpreted by the Grupo Oficina, in a celebrated theatrical performance from 1967, fundamentally recorded in 1971 and released only in the 1980s.

A story about the lies, treachery and vengeance of a middle-class family living on the outskirts of São Paulo. Four characters try desperately to change their lives, but are unable to escape their destiny.

Year 2006. There are riots in São Paulo. In the middle of the violent situation, widow Lucia is trying to get her young son Rafael from prison.

A documentary on Boca do Lixo, a dowtown São Paulo square that became a tentpole for film distribution on the early 20th century, becoming, from the 1960s on, a production district for popular eroctic films and for avant-garde directors.

British documentary showing the intimacy of Ayrton Senna in Brazil. Like his farm in Tatuí, interior of the state of São Paulo, where he built a kart track. He travels by helicopter through the city of São Paulo, to his building in Santana, North Zone of the city. He shows his houses in São Paulo and Angra dos Reis, in Rio de Janeiro. And it speaks of its physical and psychological preparation.

Mayara, Fernanda and Rosa, three young people from wealthy families, leave their cities in the interior and settle in São Paulo. They fall into a life of prostitution but eventually fall in love. Their families are worried about their disappearance, although they find them when they appear on a TV show.

Carlos is a young man from the São Paulo middle class who works for a big company during a time when foreign automobile industries were settling in Brazil. Shortly after, he accepts a job at a factory that makes automobile parts, where he becomes manager. To a certain extent, he is a family man who works hard, earns well and lives unsatisfied. Without any prospects in his life to change the condition he rejects, his last resort is escaping.

Bárbara, a French girl living in São Paulo, and two friends decide to transform a little apartment into a luxury bordello, "The Palace of Angels", securing money and success, but some problems as well.

Jorge, bastard child of the infamous Red Light Bandit, decides himself to pursuit a life of crime after meeting with his father, who has been incarcerated for the last 30 years.

After arguing with his ex-girlfriend, truck driver Jorge hits the road again, while remembering the past and questioning his friendship with his manipulative boss.

To the beat of his avant-garde and eclectic rhythms, Brazilian rapper Emicida performs hits from his album AmarElo at the São Paulo Municipal Theater.

Over the course of a year, film follows Vancouver Pride Society president Ken Coolen to various international Pride events, including Poland, Hungary, Russia, Sri Lanka and others where there is great opposition to pride parades. In North America, Pride is complicated by commercialization and a sense that the festivals are turning away from their political roots toward tourism, party promotion and entertainment. Christie documents the ways larger, more mainstream Pride events have supported the global Pride movement and how human rights components are being added to more established events. In the New York sequence, leaders organize an alternative Pride parade, the Drag March, set up to protest the corporatization of New York Pride. A parade in São Paulo, the world's largest Pride festival, itself includes a completely empty float, meant to symbolize all those lost to HIV and to anti-gay violence.