Eldorado, a fictional Latin American country, finds itself caught between a coup d'etat and populism, between crisis and transformation. Paulo, a poet and journalist, tries to bring about political change by influencing powerful men.
An astounding synthesis of Brazil's political turmoil leading up to the 1964 military coup, Glauber Rocha's film stages archetypes of Brazilian society locked in a struggle for power, relying heavily on allegory and a Brechtian approach to dialogue and mise-en-scene. While rooted in Brazil's reality, it also resonates with the broader context of military coups across Latin America. The protagonist embodies the utopian aspirations crushed by the military dictatorship, and his trajectory reflects the frustrations of left-leaning intellectuals, including Rocha himself, treated here with a sharp sense of self-criticism that sparked intense debate among Brazil's cultural elite. The film culminates in a carnivalesque sequence accompanying the populist leader's discourse: a chaotic yet singular eruption in which voices, bodies, and symbols collide, merging into an unforgettable image of a society at the edge of transformation.