Passages showcases Brazilian films in which the utilisation of artforms and media such as literature, painting, theatre, music, photography, radio and television, functions as a 'passage' to political and social reality.

Seventy critics and filmmakers discuss cinema around the conflict between the artist and the observer, the creator and the critic. Between 1998 and 2007, Kléber Mendonça Filho recorded testimonies about this relationship in Brazil, the United States and Europe, based on his experience as a critic.