Paulistas

Somewhere in the Central Brazilian savannah, Paulistas, a rural region in the state of Goiás, is struggling to survive. Its young people have left in a rural exodus; since 2014, no young people live in the region. And monoculture farming and the exploitation of water resources have left the countryside cracked and fallow. Director Daniel Nolasco makes his feature-length documentary debut with PAULISTAS, a cinéma vérité look at his birthplace that had its World Premiere at the prestigious Dok Leipzig Festival. Attempting to capture a culture and way of life before it completely disappears in the face of modern transformations, PAULISTAS follows Nolasco's cousins - three brothers Samuel, Vincinius and Rafael - after their move to the urban region of Catalão. Until the 1970s, the rural region was formed by a group of small farms, all with a few acres of land plying subsistence agriculture, and the region's residents were all from the same family. This scenario began to change in the late '80s, with the arrival of soybean monoculture in the state and the purchase of the farms by landowners, and the exodus of the rural population began. Yet, each July, the departed young return for vacation, arriving from their new burgeoning, modern cities to visit their parents and a way of life on the farm that's nearly extinct. A beautifully-composed portrait of a place and people in decline, PAULISTAS merges images of the daily lives of the people of the Paulistas and the hydroelectric plant built in 2013, with images and sounds of the dead forest and meadows by the river or the soy plantation that nearly overtakes the few ramshackle houses that still stand, capturing a time when the future and the past are on full display.