Men from the pest control department arrive to spray an apartment for dengue fever mosquitoes. Three Cuban men live here, son Leo, father Rafael and grandfather Otto, forced by circumstances to live together. The Project of the Century was shot on the fascinating location of the unfinished nuclear power station and workmen’s blocks of flats huddled around it. Interspersed with beautiful, unique archival material from Cuban television, the social-realist atmosphere gradually makes way for a surreal, at times absurd sense of oppression.
Character study of three generations of Cubans living together in a small workers’ apartment next to an unfinished nuclear power plant, the Soviet-Cuban ‘project of the century’.
"To make films in Cuba you have to go with the flow. There are problems – even basic things like power cuts and not being able to find a working printer – which you can’t fight. You have to work with the essence of things as they happen rather than worry about the finished product. Even if this means last-minute changes to the script or simplifications of the mise-en-scene." (Carlos M. Quientela)
Carlos M. Quintela
Born in 1984 in Cuba, where he trained in film and screenwriting. During his studies he made a number of short films that attracted positive responses at various film festivals. His first feature, The Swimming Pool, screened at more than twenty international film festivals. The Project of the Century, his second fiction feature, won the Tiger Award at the Rotterdam Film Festival.
filmography
2006 Ciudad sobre ruedas (short doc)
2007 Stand by (short)
2008 Contenadores (short)
2011 La piscina (The Swimming Pool)
2014 Buey (short)
2015 La obra del siglo (The Project of the Century)