This documentary about the inhabitants of northern Brazil takes an essayistic, rather than a sociological, look at a poor region whose attraction lies in the combination of rich, age-old traditions and modern influences connected to ever-present globalisation. Workers, fishermen, street vendors, farmers, men, women, children – these are the protagonists of a collective portrait offering a humorous and critically distant glimpse of the everyday reality of northern Brazil. Incorporating original Afro-Brazilian dance music (maracantu) into their work allowed the filmmakers to more objectively depict the protagonists’ often economically trying daily lives. The people of Juazeiro, Bahia, Paraíba and Pernambuco are moving into the new millennium to its rhythms: full of hope, apprehensions and dreams – the latter as often moulded by TV soap operas as by reality. Like Wim Wenders’ documentary Buena Vista Social Club, Mendez and Amorim shot their film digitally and then transferred it to 35 mm.