Juvenal and Margô work for the subway in Belo Horizonte. Juvenal is a train conductor and Margô works as a station controller. Apart from sharing the same workplace, the only thing that they have in common is the fact that they are both deeply solitary individuals, each seeking out their own way of dealing with the hard challenge of establishing socially meaningful relationships in a vast metropolis. Juvenal’s daily routine is orchestrated around the need to be close to the intense activity of downtown streets. Incapable of being alone, he has become addicted to crowds, he taps the energy of every single particle of human presence. Yet, in his endless pursuit of circulating communities in the streets, he never manages to interact with anyone. Margô, on the other hand, confines herself to a virtual reality: the internet. She is afraid of talking face to face and she even met her fiancé in an internet chatroom. Due to her lack of close friends she asks her colleague Juvenal to become her marriage witness. Juvenal is at first hesitant, but then he slowly begins to respond to and recognise Margô‘s friendship. In turn, Margô becomes increasingly attracted to this reserved man who appears to be the only person who understands her.

In THE MAN OF THE CROWD the two directors Cao Guimarães and Marcelo Gomes produce incredibly powerful imagery. Train stations, rail yards, traffic centers – these images create a permanent tension between stagnation and movement; the paralysis of the main characters and the rhythmic flow of the crowd. A disturbing, deeply human love story full of hope.