Megacities

In Mexico City a man in a superhero costume dictates his message to the world to a letter writer and his rickety typewriter: “I bear the news that the Absurd is mankind's legacy.” Michael Glawogger has put this legacy into images. He shows people and their daily fight for survival in four metropolises: Bombay, Mexico City, New York, and Moscow. In his images, the Austrian filmmaker forgoes the analyses or expert's opinion about the context of exploitation in order to maximise the shock of beauty and poetry. Taking the contradiction between form and content to a new extreme, Glawogger gifts his protagonists dignity and sovereignty that usually gets trampled on all the time in their daily lives.