This lasting classic of the Cinema Novo movement unfolds a complex and moving portrait of Belarmino Fragoso, a veteran boxer in the twilight of his career looking back at his years in the ring. Fernando Lopes uses his probing interviews of Belarmino and his former manager to structure the film and shed light on boxing as a labor and impossible livelihood. Intertwined throughout Belarmino’s frank and remarkably introspective commentary are vividly reenacted scenes of the boxer’s past and documentary scenes of him and his wife engaged in their daily routines and rituals. Animated by the lustrous black-and-white cinematography of Augusto Cabrita, Belarmino is a strikingly modernist work that paved the way for the fictionalized documentary that is commonplace today.