Comédia Infantil

Children age quickly in Mozambique. At ten, Nelio has already seen his village torched in the civil war and his baby brother mashed under a rifle butt. Parted from his family to fend for himself in the city, he is not alone in his plight, but few of his raggle-taggle chums share his own magic powers, judiciously applied in aid of sick children. Making the most of whatever modest gifts you possess would seem to be the positive message this Swedish-Portuguese-Mozambican co-production wrests from a scenario of potential hopelessness. There is a slight air of wishful thinking, but the director has coaxed unaffected performances from her cast of street children. Piecing the melodramatic plot together from a string of coincidences is where the effort comes in, but the film's fundamentally decency wins us over.