This is a finely-tuned piece of world cinema that brings home the hardships and brutality of life in modern Brazil with far more force than the steady stream of newspaper and television reports.

When his mother is run over by a bus, young Josué is abandoned in Rio de Janeiro, a city where random brutality and cynicism appear to be the norm. His only hope rests in finding his lost father through the ageing Dora, a stallholder in the central railway station, who writes letters for the illiterate.

Initially, she shoos the kid away when he appears at her stand, demanding she write to his father, as she assumes he has no money, which is true. However, when she finds him sleeping in the street next morning, her heart softens and she offers him the shelter of her home.

As in the wonderful Czech film, Kolya, the responsibility of looking after the vulnerable child becomes a catalyst for change in the adult's life. Dora and Josue end up hitting the road in search of his father who, we are led to believe, is a complete drunkard, even though the boy, a feisty little thing, refuses to accept this. The expedition becomes another lesson in survival, fraught by the pair's aggressiveness towards each other.

The film is shot through with a dark melancholy, emphasised by the wind-swept South American desert plains, the soulessness and violence of city life, and the alienating coldness of religious imagery. Despite spells of lyricism, including a memorable chase through a village candlelit service, earthy humour and director Walter Salles's unique cinematic vision, the film refuses to over-sentimentalise very real social problems.

Fernanada Montengra as Dora and Vinicius de Oliverira as Josué make a hard-skinned duo, scrapping verbally and physically. And yet, slowly, with time and through shared experience, they warm to each other, becoming almost touchingly close.

In a film that paints such a bleak picture of modern Brazil, this is a small, but welcome, consolation.