Ivone, a Rainha do Pecado (1984)

In the late 1930s, Ivone is arrested on charges of prostitution (when she was doing it to earn badly needed money to sustain her son) and Nelsinho, her 7-year-old son, is sent to a reformatory school. Under bad mistreatment and forced to eat cockroaches, the boy escapes from the school, leading two of his schoolmates. Meanwhile, the judge gives permission to the mother for a short leave, to visit her son - provided that she does not go the red light district. Upset that the authorities had separated her from her son - now lost - the woman decides to become a classy prostitute, and get rich. Her son grows up as a pickpocket, and one day he is arrested for a murder he did not commit and condemned to 25 years in prison. After serving his sentence, Nelsinho gets out, and eventually meets with his mother under dramatic circumstances.