Homeless adolescent Pixote (Fernando Ramos Da Silva) finds himself thrown into a juvenile prison in a roundup of São Paulo's street children. The prison is a nightmarish world where sadistic guards torture and murder the young inmates. Fleeing with a transgendered fellow inmate named Lilica (Jorge Juliao) and her boyfriend, Dito (Gilberto Moura), Pixote journeys to the streets of Rio de Janeiro and becomes enmeshed in an underworld of drugs and violence.