After a group of workers find out that their elevator factory will go bankrupt, and the machines start disappearing from the warehouse, they try to organize themselves to keep the manufacturing going. While Italian director Daniele (Incalcaterra), who in the movie turns into something like the contemporary version of Jean-Pierre Gorin, sitting at a table and eating delicious food, discusses with his friends whether capitalism will collapse and whether self-management is the right solution, Ze visits his father who still keeps a book about Lenin on the shelf of his fishing hut, and who will take him to a hidden place where he buried a machine gun, believing that the battle is still a possibility (“If we do not destroy the gorillas, they will destroy us”). We find ourselves in the Portuguese field that has already been laid out by Miguel Gomes in his trilogy 1001 Night. The truth is that the author’s three-hour piece is at the same time an appeal to us to think about the role of human work in times of crisis, a hymn of collective impotence and a sad musical, although their La La Land will only happen at the very end. “Oh world, you have done us too many bad things, but we love you!” exclaims Ze, climbing the pipe of the abandoned factory.

Translation: Martina Klarić