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- The Electro Nuclear Plant of Juragua, near Cienfuegos, Cuba, was one of the most ambitious projects ever undertaken by the county's communist government. It was know through the island as "The Project of the Century". The nearby Nuclear City, where the plant's workers were to live, was conceived as a sort of paradise, a model socialist town. But then, in 1992, six months before the project was to be completed, the Soviet Union, which had funded the project, collapsed. A state of "temporary paralysation" was declared. This lasted over 25 years. Slowly, the place was forgotten and is now known locally as "The Ghost Town". However, many of the never-to-be future workers of the plant still live there to this day. After training for up to seven years in Havana and the Soviet Union for highly specialised positions, they had nowhere else to go. This is their story. Using a mixture of archive footage from the town's own television station, TeleNuclear, testimonials of its inhabitants and a questioning voice over by the film's director, The Russian Playground explores the dreams and memories of a people who spend their lives preparing for a future which never materialised. The Russian Playground is a visually poetic film; how could it not be? Poetry is what the landscape offers up naturally. The Nuclear City and the abandoned nuclear plant are set in a barren landscape. The town was never entirely completed, and has been left nearly untouched since its construction. Its vista is dominated by the skeletons of two never completed tower blocks, covered in Communist slogans such as SOCIALISM O MUERTE (Socialism or Death) and VENCEREMOS! (We Shall Win!). The Nuclear Plant itself is monolithic and awe-inspiring, but nature has made in-roads, covering the soviet concrete with vines and wildlife. Shining steel pieces of the reactor itself have been left scattered in the lands surrounding it. A helicopter landing pad is now covered, like a piece of conceptual art, with cow manure. Beneath the town is a maze-like network of bunkers, now also abandoned, haunted by the painted image of Che Guevara; hanging hear him, a dead bat. The overall effect - highlighted through the photography and underscored with a creative and complex sound design and music- seems post-apocalyptic, with undertones of dystopian 1970s sci-fi. Although we are in the tropical island of Cuba, at times the landscape looks more like Tarkovsky's Stalker.