The Pope's Toilet

This 2007 Uruguayan film, co-directed by César Charlone and Enrique Fernández, is set on the eve of Pope John Paul II's 1988 visit to Melo, a small town on the Brazilian border. Fifty thousand people are said to be coming, and the town calculates what it can sell them. Beto, a small-time smuggler, thinks of what nobody else has: he will build a pay toilet in front of his house. A title before the film states that these events did not actually happen. Charlone was the cinematographer on City of God; the visual approach here is unshowy, close to documentary. The real subject is not hope but the economy of hope, how much a poor town can invest in the story it tells itself. Scenes that fix on the legs of men hauling goods across the border by bicycle make labour measured in bodies concrete. Who it's for: viewers who like Latin American cinema of everyday life and comedies with bitter endings. Who it's not for: those wanting poverty tied off with a lesson or a solution, or arriving unprepared for how hard the ending lands.