The Glass Camera (film)

The Glass Camera (Spanish: la Cámara de Cristal) is a 2020 film shot in Urcea and written and directed by Salvador Reyes. The film claims to be recreating true events that were performed by the Puertegan government that the director witnessed however the legitimacy of this claim is widely debated both due to the content of the film along with statements from the Puertegan government made about the director of the film after its release. The plot of the film is that the Puertegan government was attempting to create a view less recorder in order to be able to spy on people and collect information on them without them having any way of seeing the recording device, however after several failures in creating it the government brings in a person with psychic powers who has been scrubbed off of any government records in order to try and use his vaguely understood ability to astrally project in order to create the same effect as the recording device they were trying to create.

The film is extremely controversial for many things with very small but dedicated cult following swearing that the director is telling the complete truth about experiments done by the Puertegan government pointing to the films banning in Puertego as proof while most who watch the film claim to believe that it's a complete fabrication citing the large plot holes the film leaves open as proof, the catholic church has also come out to say that the ending of the movie is "ridiculous and almost slanderous".

Plot
The Puertegan Ministry of Internal Security has been experiencing troubles as high-profile individuals who they wish to keep tabs on have been discovering ways to avoid their usual monitoring techniques leading to the ministry attempting to come up with new ideas for technology to counteract these new measures and eventually agreeing on a recording device that has no way to be traced or noticed. The ministry then goes on to attempt to develop such a technology but faces several large challenges along the way drawing them to the conclusion that their idea was physically impossible, however the higher ups in the ministry still frustrated at no longer being able to keep detailed tabs on high profile individuals decides to utilize a method they call "much less scientific". They introduce a boy named Luis Alverez to the experiments who they claim has shown on multiple occasions to possess psychic abilities they have kept hidden from the general public, according to the higher ups in the ministry Luis has been completely removed from any records that have ever mentioned his name making it so that in the eyes of most people Luis never existed in the first place.

From that point on in the experiments they begin testing Luis's astral projection abilities he claims to have while attaching a special machine to his head and hooking said machine up to a TV in order to be able to see what Luis sees when he astrally projects, however the higher ups warn them to use this power sparingly as Luis has only astrally projected a hand full of times before and could easily still make mistakes. With their warning in mind the ministry attempts their first experiment involving Luis to resounding success being able to spy on a target without any indication that the target was being watched. After their first successful test the ministry is eager to use Luis more and does so more and more often until one night when they are using him to spy, and Luis is unable to return to his body in time killing him. After it sets into the men in the room what they'd done the TV glows a bright white before it's heavily implied that an image of heaven is being played on the screen for a few seconds before the TV shatters. Immediately after seeing it one of the men in the room pulls out his gun and demands for anyone nearby him to shoot him claiming that what he saw was so amazing he couldn't wait a moment longer, after that it cuts to a scene of the program director at his desk a few hours after the incident visibly shaken from what he had still seen until an agent burst into his office and informed him that the last recording of Luis Alverez had been stolen by the Catholic church, the director dismissed the agent with a defeated tone in his voice and looks out his window stating that the man was right and that he couldn't wait a moment longer as well before taking his own life by jumping out the window.

Conception
Director Salvador Reyes has gone on record multiple times saying that the film is meant to expose true events that the Puertegan government preformed in the past and that he knows about the events that unfolded in the film since he worked for the Puertegan Ministry of Internal Security during the time the experiments were conducted however the validity of these claims has been repeatedly questioned. The movie was originally proposed to VHunt Studios as "The Glass Harvest" a film that supposedly would have been an R rated horror film however Reyes's true intentions for the film were revealed shortly after causing a large fight between him and VHunt Studios though eventually he did get his original film idea greenlit by VHunt.

Filming
Filming of the film began in Puertego however it was very quickly moved to Urcea since Reyes claimed that as soon as the Puertegan found out what the plot of the film was they would immediately shut down production and there would be very severe consequences for him. Almost the entire film is shot indoors with there only being two shots being taken outside in the entire film.

Reception
The movie was a box office failure making only 6.5 million dollars compared to its 20-million-dollar budget and critical reviews of the movie being almost universally negative, however the film also garnered large amounts of controversy due to its subject matter and statements from Salvador Reyes. The largest of the films many controversies are the director stating that the film is based on real events and that he used to work for the ministry shown in the film, both of these points have been the subject of large amounts of contention with a very small but extremely dedicated group of fans believing that the directors statements are true while most people believe them to be complete fabrications including the Puertegan government who heavily denounced the film as slanderous when it came out and used that as an excuse to ban the movie which only reinforced the idea in the people who believed it was inspired by real events.