Nine-year-old orphan Dores is working in the kitchen of a sugar plantation in 1930s Brazil when in walks Graca, the thrillingly ill-behaved daughter of a wealthy sugar baron. Born to wildly different worlds, Dores and Graca quickly bond over shared mischief, and then, on a deeper level, over music. It will become their shared passion, the source of their partnership and their rivalry, and the only way out of the life to which each was born. But only one of the two is destined to be a star.