Mariana, a simple girl from the countryside of Minas Gerais, arrives in Rio de Janeiro looking for a fiancé from Rio, who had given her an address in Copacabana. His name is José da Silva. The girl stays with an aunt, Dona Adalgisa, mother of Baiano and Elisa, who lives in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro. Knowing the cousin’s problems, and after making sure that the address given by the boy does not exist, the relatives try to find him. At the same time, Mariana begins to experience another problem: she is pregnant. Convinced that the boy took advantage of the girl’s naivety, the cousins, plus Eduardo, a colleague of Baiano’s who falls in love with Mariana when he sees her at the bus station, where he went to pick her up, undertake a tenacious search throughout Rio de Janeiro after the child’s father. It would be like looking for a needle in a haystack.

The production of the new digital copy of Needle in a Haystack was made by Cinemateca Brasileira using film matrices produced in the 1970s. The image was scanned at 2K resolution and underwent digital treatments to reduce the physical deterioration marks of the originals.