Central Station is a 1998 comedy-drama road movie directed by Walter Salles from a screenplay by João Emanuel Carneiro and Marcos Bernstein, based on an original idea by Salles. It stars Fernanda Montenegro, Marília Pêra and Vinícius de Oliveira. The film tells the story of a young boy's friendship with a jaded middle-aged woman.

Plot

Dora is a retired schoolteacher who works at Rio de Janeiro's Central Station, writing letters for illiterate customers to earn a living. Embittered by life, she usually shows a lack of patience with customers and sometimes does not mail the letters she writes, putting them in a drawer or even tearing them up instead. One of her customers is the mother of Josué, a poor 9-year-old boy who hopes to meet his unknown father someday. When she is killed in a bus accident just outside the train station, and Josué is left homeless, Dora feels compelled to take him in. She trafficks him to a corrupt couple but later steals him back out of guilt.

Awards