Rio de Janeiro's Carnival draws more than two million people to the streets each day, and this film follows the samba schools whose members spend the rest of the year building it. Cameras move through workshops where costume makers stitch feathers and sequins by hand, float builders weld and paint giant sculptures, and drum sections rehearse the rhythms that will carry each school down the Sambadrome. Community organizers and dancers describe what a school's parade means to the neighborhood behind it, turning the festival from a tourist spectacle into a yearlong act of collective labor. The film treats Carnival less as a party to attend and more as an industry and a culture, one built on unpaid effort, local pride, and fierce competition between schools for the top prize. By the time the parade actually happens, the footage of feathers and drums carries the weight of everything that went into making it.