Planet of the Children

Documentary about Cuban education El planeta de los niños is not a documentary and not a feature film Sarmiento actually filmed a documentary subject with the miseenscène and the cutting of a feature film Without further ado she takes the viewer into a world where adults would appear to have died out a society within which all functions and professions are held by children with deadly seriousness as if things have always been this way Only right at the end does Sarmiento reveal that she shot the film at the Escuele de Pioneros set up in Cuba in 1979 an institution which Fidel Castro gave to the children of his people to prepare themselves for a later working life The film opens with an asgoodasreal wedding ceremony and progresses via a birth to a simulated battle from birth to death The subtle irony with which Sarmiento portrays this Utopian world was not understood by all German critics