[5] Dora is a retired schoolteacher who works at Rio de Janeiro's Central Station, writing letters for illiterate customers to earn a living.

Initially reluctant to be responsible for the boy, Dora eventually decides to accompany him on a trip to northeastern Brazil in search of his father.

Penniless, they are picked up by a kind, evangelical truck driver who abandons them when Dora encourages him to drink beer and then grows too friendly.

Dora trades her watch for a ride to "Bom Jesus do Norte" (a fictionalized version of Cruzeiro do Nordeste,[6] a district of Sertânia, Pernambuco).

They find Josué's father's address in Bom Jesus, but he is gone; the current residents say he won a house in a lottery and moved to the new settlements.

With no money, Josué saves them from destitution by suggesting Dora write letters for visitors arriving in Bom Jesus for a massive pilgrimage.

Isaías asks Dora to read a letter that his father wrote to Ana when he disappeared, six months ago, in case she returned.

Being a co-production between Brazil and France, the film was chosen by the French Ministry of Culture to receive resources of Fonds Sud Cinema, for their funding.

The website's critical consensus states: "Director Salles transcends road-movie clichés and crafts a film that is as moving as it is universal".

[13] Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 80 out of 100, based on 24 critics, indicating generally favorable reviews.

[16] Entertainment Weekly gave the film a grade of A–, concluding "In outline, Central Station recalls many of the bogusly sticky adult–kid bonding tales that have been the bane of foreign cinema for too long, but Salles, like De Sica and Renoir, displays a pure and unpatronizing feel for the poetry of broken lives.