Based on the figure of the late João Fraga, Joãozinho is an Angolan student studying engineering at the Institute of Technology in Lisbon. It’s the swinging sixties, and Angola is under Portuguese colonial rule. Salazar’s brutal secret service is everywhere on the lookout for communists and agitators. João is apolitical, but attracts their attention when he takes Carmo – the daughter of one of Salazar’s ministers – as his lover. His studies forgotten, he starts living a bohemian life. He is constantly watched by PIDE, and one more drunken scuffle lands him in jail, before deportation back to Angola. On his return his father finds him a job in a tax office, where he fleeces the treasury and squanders the money on fast cars, champagne and backing a local football team. He is arrested, but the Lisbon government of Salazar unexpectedly falls, and João is released as a political prisoner...