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The Abattoir

View on the Pragda STREAM site

The Abattoir is a raw and intimate portrait of life in the margins of contemporary Cuba. Set in a crumbling state-built housing project, the film follows two young men—Daniel, a pig farmer, and Fernando, an aspiring filmmaker—who dream of escaping both their neighborhood and the country. Though their paths differ, they are united by a sense of frustration, disillusionment, and unrealized potential.

Through a hybrid of documentary realism and narrative storytelling, director Fernando Fraguela Fosado explores the emotional and existential toll of entrapment in a decaying system. As Daniel tends to pigs amid daily struggles and Fernando turns his camera on the bleak surroundings, their parallel stories reveal a Cuba rarely seen—one defined not by revolution or resilience, but by stagnation, isolation, and the quiet yearning for freedom.

The Abattoir is a powerful meditation on youth, inertia, and the haunting realization that escape may be as elusive as hope itself.

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