Every so often, a film unexpectedly appears from a remote corner of the world to capture the imaginations of audiences everywhere. When Walter Salles' "Central Station" was unveiled for the first time at this year's Sundance Film Festival, crowds embraced the film--with tears, with applause and with joy. A month later, it took the Berlin Film Festival by storm, winning the Golden Bear for Best Film and the Silver Bear for Best Actress for Fernanda Montenegro. For "Central Station" is that rarest of achievements: a film that speaks to your head while it touches your heart.

The film centers on a young boy (Vinicius de Oliveira) whose mother is killed in front of Rio de Janeiro's Central Station. Homeless and with nowhere to turn, he is reluctantly befriended by a lonely and cynical woman (Montenegro). Resisting her initial impulse to make a quick profit off the child, she commits to returning him to his father in Brazil's remote Northeast.

As buses and trucks carry the motley pair through the increasingly unfamiliar terrain, they defy their initial aversion to each other, journeying closer together and deeper inside themselves. Set against an epic backdrop of vast, majestic landscapes, the trip becomes a quest for their own identities: one boy's search for his father; and one woman's search for her heart.

Produced by five-time Academy Award-winner Arthur Cohn ("The Garden of the Finzi-Continis," "Black and White in Color"), "Central Station" introduces director Walter Salles to the ranks of the great humanist filmmakers. Using a simple and intimate structure, he has fashioned a profoundly moving tale of the triumph of the human spirit.