Joel de Oliveira

The story of five generations of the Austrian-Brazilian Knieps family, from the inauguration of their family-owned Great Mystical Circus in the 1910s up to the early 21st century, following both the family and the circus from their prime through to their decadence.

University student who works in a bank experiences a personal crisis: he is torn between his ambitions and the temptation to engage in the armed movement against the military dictatorship of the time, in Brazil. At the same time, his love life is also confusing: he is unable to choose between two girls: an apolitical rich one, whose main interest is her own sexual liberation; and a working girl with family problems.

A German family moves to a small town in the interior of the state of Paraná, Brazil, and buys a hotel there, which soon becomes sort of a meeting point for Nazi sympathizers.