A lonely former schoolteacher, Dora, ekes out a living writing and mailing letters for illiterate passersby in Rio's Central Station. Dora's lonely existence is shattered when one of her clients, a young mother is killed outside the station--her child, Josue, is left behind, devastated. Coming to terms with the fact that Josue is now homeless and with nowhere to go, the cynical Dora takes it upon herself to care for the woman's orphaned young son. Resisting her initial impulse to make a quick profit off the child, Dora 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, Dora and Josue defy their initial aversion to each other, journeying closer together and deeper inside themsleves. The trip becomes a quest for their own identities: one boy's search for his father; and one woman's search for her heart.