Death of a Bureaucrat

About the Film

Paco

falls into the gears of a machine that mass-produces busts of the party ruler. As a special tribute, Paco's work colleagues send the inventor off to eternity together with his union card. But their comradely gesture catapults the man's widow to the brink of catastrophe. Without the union card she won't receive her husband's pension. So to help out, Paco's nephew embarks on a journey through a sea of red-tape in the pension and exhumation agencies. «Paco tirelessly cranked out memorial busts. He surpassed the norm.»

Finally,

the nephew takes shortcut, or at least that's what he thinks it will be. With the help of a few friends, he reopens the grave to retrieve the union card. But now he has a dead body on his hands and has to jump through yet more bureaucratic hoops, otherwise he'll get stuck with the corpse, literally. So, it's back to the office-hopping odyssey.

Review in the German Newspaper, die taz:

“This machine swallows its own inventor as elsewhere the revolution consumes its own children”. DEATH OF A BUREAUCRAT begins with Terry Gilliam-type animation, and thus the tone is set. The opening credits roll in the form of a official document, and appearing in the “Accolades and Acknowledgment” column are none other than Buster Keaton and Laurel and Hardy. Without question the film is both a product of post-revolution Cuba and a comment on the strange outgrowths of bureaucracy. But it fully exploits comedy techniques developed in American slapstick.”

And: “ For this reason DEATH OF A BUREAUCRAT is not simply a homage to the film culture of the class enemy; it takes amazing liberties by portraying serious problems in a Surrealist disguise.”