The Nothing Factory (A Fábrica de Nada)

The Nothing Factory is lively, inventive and impassioned - kin to Miguel Gomes' recent The Arabian Nights but with an approach entirely its own. The setting is a Lisbon lift factory, whose owners plan to bail out, leaving the workforce high and dry. Instead, the workers stay put, with encouragement from an activist and filmmaker (real-life documentarist Daniele Incalcaterra). His presence brings a Brechtian dimension to a film whose ensemble style makes it closer to the sprawling social panorama of Abdellatif Kechiche's Couscous than to Ken Loach. An unpredictable structure also finds room for a sudden song-and-dance number, as well as interludes from the punk band led by worker Zé (José Smith Vargas).