A Useful Life

In this deadpan comedy of cinema and obsolescence, Jorge (played by Uruguayan film critic Jorge Jellinek) has worked his entire adult life at Montevideo’s Cinemateca Uruguaya. His routine has remained the same for years: projecting films, greeting the same six or seven audience members in line for every show, chatting with colleagues over possible series and deciding what to repair next (the projectors or the seats?). But his days in cinema, and those of his boss (played by the former head of the Cinemateca, Manuel Martínez Carril), might be coming to a sudden and life-changing end with the threatened closure of the economically unviable institution.