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A Brazilian burglar named Jorge becomes known as 'The Red Light Bandit' for his irreverent tone and bold heists in São Paulo's Boca do Lixo neighborhood.
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Born and raised in the misery of Brazilian slums, Jorge becomes a luxury house burglar in São Paulo and gets nicknamed "The Red Light Bandit" by the sensationalist press. In addition to wearing a red flashlight, he talks to his hostages in an irreverent tone and makes bold breakthroughs to later spend the money extravagantly. His world is the decadent neighbourhood of Boca do Lixo.
"This movie is loosely based on the life of notorious Brazilian outlaw João Acácio Pereira da Costa, who terrorized Brazil in the 1960s. It is the most popular work of the so-called “Cinema Marginal” in Brazil, which went against the Cinema Novo movement and reveals the desperation of the people in the emerging urban Brazil. Sganzerla crafts a cinema that is both political and personal, a type of film that likely wouldn’t have been conceived anywhere else or in any other context. Paying homage to great masters such as Godard and Orson Wells, Sganzerla makes an extremely transgressive and iconic film, full of cynicism and mockery, with sharp critiques of our society and its organization. In ‘O Bandido da Luz Vermelha’, scoffing and debauchery are adopted as aesthetics, explicitly setting out phrases such as “when we can’t do anything, we debauch”, as well as “the Third World is going to blow up and those wearing shoes won’t make it out alive”."