LIFE MOVES ON WITH OR WITHOUT YOU.

As Felipe’s Student Visa nears its expiration, he faces an impossible choice: stay in New York and fight for a chance to pursue his love for Hip-Hop, or return to São Paulo and confront the life, culture, and music he left behind.

A film about belonging, the meaning of success and coming of age under cultural neo-colonialism.

DIRECTOR STATEMENT

Moving from São Paulo, Brazil, to New York was both a loss and a reclamation of cultural identity. While studying film in the United States, I began questioning the conditions that had brought me here and realized how profoundly American media had shaped my life until then. By the time I graduated, I carried a renewed conviction in my Brazilian identity — and a purpose as a filmmaker: to explore this experience through a distinctly Brazilian-American lens, one that speaks to the realities of many international students in America.

São Paulo, New York is a semi-autobiographical exploration of American imperialism and the interplay between Brazilian and American cultures. Told through fleeting, impressionistic moments, the film juxtaposes people, musical genres, and ways of life, while touching on themes of belonging, the meaning of success, and coming of age under cultural neo-colonialism.

In making this film, I set out to examine the differences between American and Brazilian cinema — and to create something that lives in the space between. Playing the lead was part of that challenge. As “Felipe,” I could process my own emotions as an international student living on borrowed time, confronting the same bureaucratic dilemmas I now face in real life. The film became both an artistic statement and a personal preparation for the uncertain road ahead.