Nineteen-year-old André Maciel (Lázaro Ramos) works as a photocopy machine operator in a convenience store in Porto Alegre.

Disillusioned with his life and obsessed with material wealth, he dreams of being an illustrator, but his comics, though well drawn, are rejected by publishers.

After André returns home from work, he spends time in his room drawing or spying on Sílvia (Leandra Leal), a neighbor who lives in an apartment across the street with her father Antunes, with binoculars.

Leaving the club, Andre boards a bus and sees Silvia, wanting to make small talk, he promises to buy the robe at the next opportunity.

On their lottery runs, André plays the sequence of numbers ‘1 2 3 4 5 6', earning him the mockery of Cardoso, who believes that that combination will never come out.

André hatches a plan to pull a bank heist with Cardoso and purchases a gun (using more counterfeit money) from Feitosa, a drug dealing acquaintance of his.

Social Mobility/Wealth: The Man Who Copied deals the hierarchy in Brazilian society based on material wealth and what it takes to move up.

André's voice over throughout the film turns The Man Who Copied into an ironic manual for social mobility, but it also is a classic Furtado stylistic move used to create intimacy with the characters.

Hearing André's story through the voice over helps the audience sympathize with him despite the numerous crimes he and his friends commit.

Furtado displays that wealth of any kind is most often due to luck (whether it be the family one was born into or a lottery prize) through many of the events impacting André.