Master, a Copacabana Building

"Master" is the name of a 12-story apartment building in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro's neighborhood for nightlife. Over the course of four weeks in 2001, Eduardo Coutinho's film crew rented one of the 276 apartments and used it as home base to make a film about the building's residents. We get to know the building manager, who succeeded in turning the troubled residence into a family complex within just a few years. Using interviews and a few stolen moments in the corridors of the building, Coutinho explores this world. Most of the building's residents come from the lower middle class and are just getting by, but that's just about the only thing they have in common - so many people, so many stories, sometimes told in a self-confident tone, sometimes with averted eyes. An amorous couple talk about how they met each other late in life, and a man recalls the time he met Frank Sinatra. A student is living on her own for the first time and misses her grandma's potato pancakes, while another girl is struggling with her job as a call girl. The fact that a film crew is interested in their stories puzzles some of them. Hope, fear, dreams, memories, love and loneliness all appear from behind the doors of this average apartment building.