On a dusty road in a stretch of Brazilian nowhere circa 1977, a yellow Volkswagen Beetle pulls into a gas station where a dead body lies under a piece of cardboard held down by a rock.

The attendant explains that it’s been there since Sunday, the result of a theft gone awry, and that the cops refuse to deal with it. No sooner has he said that than the Highway Patrol arrives, although they’re less interested in the corpse than in the canary Bug’s driver, Marcelo (Wagner Moura), They search his car and find nothing, but the tension of the encounter, exacerbated by the presence of the recently deceased, suggests that catastrophe is only a hair’s breadth away.

Marcelo, it’s subsequently revealed, has returned to his hometown of Recife to reunite with his son Fernando (Enzo Nunes)—a mission

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