Jacob Burns Film Preservation Series: Death of a Bureaucrat

Tomás Gutiérrez Alea was the most internationally successful director from post-revolutionary Cuba. In one of his funniest films, Gutiérrez Alea satirizes the byzantine nature of bureaucracy, and  thus remains a favorite of Cuban audiences. The protagonist, known only as the Nephew (Salvador Wood), simply wants to help his aunt get her late husband’s pension—but his uncle, a loyal Cuban Socialist patriot, was buried with his official work card. An escalating series of “official” responses leads to increasingly dark slapstick chaos. Death of a Bureaucrat is a tribute to Luis Buñuel-style comedies that is uniquely Cuban.

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