Severely battered from the Beirut Port Explosion on August 4th, Minerva passed away eight days later. Her son Joseph, while still grieving for his loss, sunk into a long and absurd bureaucratic path through the inept system that disowned his mother as a victim of the blast. Minerva is gone. The explosion has snatched her soul, and the city walls have not yet recognized her as a martyr. There is no poster of her smiling face among those of the victims. Their faces are memories that will haunt us for the rest of our lives. Perhaps her son, devastated by her passing, seeks to etch her image into the city's memory. Perhaps he is seeking some confession to the crime. This is a place that casts out its children, whether dead or alive.
The Institute for Public Housing in Naples employs about 100 people. When the office is open to the public, employees receive residents who live in the 40,000 houses managed by the institute. Their task is to find solutions to citizens’ problems and trigger the bureaucratic procedures to solve them. But managing these chaotic lives within rigid legal structures is not an easy task and employees are often forced to resort to a singular art: “bureaucratic compromise”. (Tënk)
Nikolai Gogol's The Inspector General is a satire play well-known around the world. In the period between the end of World War II and the 1960s, the play was adapted in Hong Kong cinema a total of six times. Director Huang Yu alone adapted it twice, as a Republic era story and a period comedy, respectively. The 1955 Republic era-set film is more faithful to its source material, following a spoiled rich brat who is mistaken as a government inspector in a small town and ends up being wined and dined by a corrupted local official. The film pokes fun at the ugliness of bureaucracy in old society, calling back to renowned Qing Dynasty novel Officialdom Unmasked while keeping the original play's artistic style.
Bureaucracy shapes our lives and guides us from the cradle to the grave. This documentary lays bare the idiosyncrasies of bureaucracy, whether in Canada, Austria, Hungary, the Vatican or the Virgin Islands. It also attempts to make the functioning of the public service more comprehensible. The absurdities of bureaucratic behaviour are exposed with humour and irreverence.
Two brothers and their little sister are thrown out of their flat because they haven't paid the rent. The orphans pack up their few possessions and go out to the country, where the family owns a small plot of land. The children set up camp, knowing they have to fend for themselves. But this solution is insecure, too: they are told, in no uncertain terms, that all plots will shortly pass to the state unless at least the foundations of a house have been laid. The threesome get down to work, making night-time visits to neighboring sites to 'borrow' tools and materials, then building by day. But no sooner are the foundation walls complete than an unsympathetic policeman ad...
In a dystopian reality plagued by corruption, a rebellious government employee finds an alternate way to change the system: kill the corrupt.
A satirical film about bureaucracy.
The Spanish Civil War veteran and WW2 partisan Josip Crnković-Cloud faces eviction from his modest little house which is to be demolished soon to make space for new skyscraper. He tries to stop it in a legal way, but fails to break the shield of administrative bureaucreacy. He decides to use dynamite left from the war and simply blow out the house.
A copying error by a military scribe turns the Russian words "the lieutenants, however" into what looks like "lieutenant Kizhe". The Tsar reads the error, and wants to meet this (non-existent) lieutenant. The courtiers, eager to avoid the wrath of the temperamental Tsar, create a Kizhe to serve as their royal scapegoat.
Cobler Mr Prokouk starts working in an office where there is a lot of paperwork too big for him.
A man in the mythical Elyria tries to kill himself but a cop stops him from doing so. In Elyria, one needs a permit to commit suicide, so off the man goes to the Department of Suicides for a suicide permit, which he is granted.
A student of architecture from Zagreb believes that the new model of city can meet the need of its citizens. However, his professors, the corrupt business environment and even the parents of his fiancée stand on his way.
A stop-motion Sisyphus is overwhelmed by the Czechoslovakian bureaucracy.
A primary school teacher wants to assert his right to his homeland and encounters the stubbornness of civil servants, while a social worker becomes a "marriage counselor" and has dubious experiences with the authorities.
A concerned citizen encounters a political writing on a public bus stop and decides to call city services. When they fail to respond he decides to take the law into his own hands.
When Death wants to bring the plague to Württemberg in 1349, he has not reckoned with the two guard soldiers Volckel and Utz, who engage him in a heated argument about plague ordinances and entry regulations.
A man is downtown and urgently needs to pee, but a vindictive voice on the phone holds the combination to his pants in this dark comedy of desperation.
Urban girl falls for rugged forest ranger.