The story of how a quarrel between families set poor farmer Virgulino Ferreira da Silva on the path to become Lampião, the greatest leader of the cangaceiros - bandits who roamed the Northeast of Brazil until the late 1930s.
The "corn king" usually sponsors dreamy girls who want to become a miss in any contest. One of them doesn't agree with her sponsor's "donjuanesque" tactics and abandons everything to return to her former fiancé.
Wanted by the police, a university professor flees to a hotel in the interior and causes changes in the lives of the owner of the establishment and his wife.
Cowboy escaping from the drought in the Northeast Brazil meets some officers led by a cruel lieutenant, whose main objective was to catch organized outlaws and invade the small town of Juazeiro. They arrest and torture him, hoping he would tell them the whereabouts of Padre Cícero, a prominent...