Brave Woman (originally called Salve Jorge meaning "Hail (Saint) George") is a 2012 Brazilian telenovela.
In Istanbul, Turkey, Morena (Nanda Costa) is auctioned by a group of wealthy and successful men. She ended up being sold for a U$3.500 bid. The next scene shows Morena running desperately through the streets, screaming for help. The scene flashes back to eight months earlier.
Morena is a single-mother who lives with her four-year-old son Junior (Luiz Felipe Mello) and her mom Lucimar (Dira Paes) helps her to support him. Though unemployed, she manages to garner strength and resolve in order to forge her own path.
Following the 2010 occupation of the Complexo do Alemão by the Brazilian Army, Morena meets Theo (Rodrigo Lombardi), a cavalry officer who is charmed by her spontaneity and sensuality. They fall in love, unaware that love does not conquer all.
Motivated by the prospect of a better future and facing eviction, Morena accepts a job offer to work in a coffeehouse in Istanbul for a few months. Her decision, however, not only ends her engagement to Theo, who disapproves of her trip, but leads to her being a victim of an international human trafficking ring.
Cunning Wanda (Totia Meirelles), who offered Morena what turns out to be a fictitious job, works with Livia Marini (Cláudia Raia), a sophisticated, intelligent and seemingly irreproachable woman. The truth, however, tells a different story: although she claims to be a world-renowned talent agent, Livia is in fact head of an international human trafficking organization which generates billions of dollars every year.
Upon arriving in Turkey, Morena is forced to work at a dreary nightclub where Russo (Adriano Garib), head of security and member of the ring, constantly intimidates young women by threatening to harm their families in Brazil.
This series contains examples of:
- Action Mom: Morena has been shown to be able to fight long time before she had her child, having lived in a dangerous region where she always had to be extra careful and able to stand up for herself.
- Big Bad Duumvirate: Livia, Wanda and Russo are the leaders of the trafficking ring that abducted Morena and several other girls.
- Human Traffickers: The major theme of the series. A trafficking which handles not nly young women to be sexualy exploited but also babies to be sold to wealthy families.
- Love Triangle: Morena, Theo and his colleague in the army Érica, whom he was dating for a while before he fell for Morena.
