The Survivors resembles both Alea's own Last Supper and Bunuel's Exterminating Angel in its closed-in, darkly satiric portrait of an entire class in the midst of a profound crisis - its impending elimination! Taking the form of a parable or fable, The Survivors observes an extended bourgeois family in Cuba who decide, in the aftermath of the Revolution, to cut themselves off completely from the “contamination” of outside events. Hording money and supplies, and closing off their villa (still with servants inside), they attempt to maintain both traditional family stability and an upper-class lifestyle in the midst of the revolutionary changes taking place outside the estate walls. Just as the history of humanity has passed through different forms of relations between men as the productive forces develop - barbarism, primitive communism, slavery, feudalism, capitalism... - the family follows a reverse path as its productive forces decrease, until it reaches cannibalism. It is a tribute to Alea's command of the medium, to his cutting, ironic sensibility that the film remains suspenseful and full of surprises despite the fact that the direction of the story narrative is clear from the start.