Important and influential short-length documentary by Geraldo Sarno on the migration of poor people from Brazilian Northeast to São Paulo. One third of it portrays the influence of religion, either Catholic (and its charity approach) or Umbanda and charismatic Christianity (both shown as focused in magical cure). The beginning, with footage of the arrival by train, has a narration strongly and declaredly informed by sociological research (scholars Octávio Ianni, Juarez Brandão and Cândido Procópio Ferreira de Camargo), constrasting an idea of traditional backwadness in Northeast and of advanced rationality in São Paulo. There are also testimonies of a businessman who speaks unabashedly about how unskilled workers, such as those poor Northeastern migrants, are easily fired, substituted, dismissed. Indeed, the best of the documentary are the interviews, particularly the ones with migrants themselves. There are many interviewees who talk about extremely low and insufficient wages, and the lack of opportunities, particularly when they are not young - and one of them goes back to Northeast in the end of the film. However, my favorite parts are the testimonies of a migrant who is completely absorbed by mainstream capitalist ideology: he says he feels not as a Northeastern but as a Paulista, and that he would like to belong to a trade union but not to an union that has bonds to Russia and Cuba. Striking and depressing moment.
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