HISTÓRIAS que só existem quando lembradas   BF-2012 

Beautifully photographed fable about a ghost village where no one has died since 1976, where old people are stuck in their memories - until the arrival of a young female photographer changes things. Also a melancholy ode to the heydays of the coffee plantations in the Paraíba Valley, once the symbol of Brazil.

Every morning Madalena makes bread for Antonio’s old coffee shop. And every day she crosses the railroads where no trains have passed for years, cleans up the gate of the locked cemetery, listens to the priest’s sermon and then shares lunch with the other old villagers.
Clinging to the memory of her dead husband and living in her past, Madalena is awakened by the arrival of Rita, a young photographer who comes to the village of Jotuomba where time seems to have stopped and people are stuck in their memories and daily rituals. And why is the cemetery locked?
The beautifully photographed debut film of documentary maker Julia Murat is a melancholy homage to Brazil’s Paraiba Valley, once a flourishing region that prospered thanks to its coffee plantations, now a derelict region full of empty estates and ghost towns. Prize winner at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival.