Found Memories

Brazil's Paraiba Valley was once a flourishing region that prospered on returns from its coffee plantations during the 1800s boom. Over time the area has been reduced to a scattering of empty, rundown estates and ghostly villages. Julia Murat's delicately crafted debut, Historias Que So Existem Quando Lembradas (the title phrase translates to "stories that only exist when remembered"), relays life in the Paraiba Valley through the fictitious village of Jotuomba, a place lost to the world, abandoned by the railroads and inhabited by an aging population that has forgotten what it's like to be young.