The film follows the daily life of Vanda Duarte, a heroin addict, in the Fontainhas district, a shanty town on the outskirts of Lisbon.

In spite of its three-hour length, the director Pedro Costa made the film in a realist style by using fixed shots entirely.

Costa said about his impression of the district in a conversation with Jean-Pierre Gorin[1] When I entered the Fontainhas area, there were colors and smells that made me remember the things and events of the past, and also ideas about people to which I am attracted.

The displaced inhabitants are featured in Costa's next film Juventude em Marcha (Colossal Youth, 2006).

The Criterion Collection described the film as "burrow[ing] even deeper into the Lisbon ghetto and the lives of its desperate inhabitants... with the intimate feel of a documentary and the texture of a Vermeer painting" and praised its "unflinching, fragmentary look at a handful of self-destructive, marginalized people".