General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

The Pope's Toilet

The Pope's Toilet (El baño del Papa) is a 2007 Uruguayan comedy-drama co-directed by Enrique Fernández and César Charlone, about a small-time smuggler in the border town of Melo who decides to build a pay toilet for the crowds expected at Pope John Paul II's 1988 visit.¹ It premiered in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, where it competed for the Golden Camera, and it is based on real events: the pope did visit Melo in 1988.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Original title	El baño del Papa (Spanish language)²
Directors	Enrique Fernández and César Charlone, both first-time feature directors; screenplay by Fernández¹^•²
Setting	Melo, a Uruguayan town on the Brazilian border, in 1988, during the run-up to Pope John Paul II's visit²
Lead cast	César Troncoso (Beto), Virginia Méndez (Carmen), Virginia Ruiz (Silvia), Mario Silva (Valvulina)²
Premiere	Un Certain Regard, 2007 Cannes Film Festival¹
Runtime	97 minutes²
Reception	88% Tomatometer from 26 critics; 79% Popcornmeter from 2,500+ audience ratings on Rotten Tomatoes³

Spoilers

Plot

The film is set in 1988 in Melo, a small Uruguayan city near the Brazilian border that survives largely on smuggling. When news spreads that Pope John Paul II will visit, the townspeople hope the pilgrims crossing from Brazil will bring them an economic windfall, and most invest their savings in food and drink to sell.²^•⁴ Television newscasts inflate the expected crowd, with estimates rising from 20,000 to 40,000, then 100,000, and finally 200,000 in the days before the event.⁴

Beto (César Troncoso) has a different plan: he will build a toilet and charge pilgrims to use it. To finance the construction he must make increasingly risky smuggling runs on his bicycle across the border to Brazil, despite the hostility of his family.² He lives with his wife Carmen (Virginia Méndez) and her daughter Silvia (Virginia Ruiz), and works with his friend Valvulina (Mario Silva), frequently dodging the inspector Meleyo.³ The border itself, cultural, geographic, and political, functions in the film as a negative force: the opening sequence shows Beto and his friend hiding behind a rock to watch the border control, a posture that marks them as people the authorities treat as adversaries.⁵

Production and background

The script grew out of a story Fernández, a native of Melo, heard at a barbecue there: the failed hopes of townspeople who believed the pope's 1988 visit could be an economic opportunity.⁶ Fernández had worked as a screenwriter in Uruguayan cinema and a drawing teacher; he began the screenplay about three years before his earlier credit Otario and collected material in a shoebox before structuring it into a feature.⁷^•⁸

To reach Charlone, an Oscar-nominated cinematographer for City of God (2002) who was then working on The Constant Gardener, Fernández handed the script in a sealed envelope to Charlone's wife before her flight to Africa, betting she would read it and press him to do the same; the plan worked.⁹^•⁷ A script doctor they consulted during rewriting prompted the creation of Silvia's storyline, her dream of leaving for the capital, which had been absent from the first draft.⁷ On set, Charlone handled the visual side while Fernández kept the shooting faithful to the script and worked closely with the actors, many of them non-professionals.¹ The shoot itself startled Melo's residents, who had assumed rumors of a film being made there were a hoax until trucks and equipment appeared in the streets.⁷

The film mixes fiction with documentary footage of the actual papal visit, a juxtaposition of history and story used for social commentary.¹⁰ Production came from Laroux Cine in Montevideo with co-production credits including Fernando Meirelles, Andrea Barata Ribeiro, Bel Berlinck, and Serge Catoire.²

Reception and awards

At Cannes the film was presented in Un Certain Regard, and it went on to collect prizes at roughly twenty festivals.¹^•⁷ Its awards included best screenplay, best actor, best actress, and the audience prize at Gramado; the Horizontes prize at San Sebastián; best screenplay at Huelva; best film at Cartagena and Quito; best Hispanic-American film and best actor in Brazil; and the Glauber Rocha Critics' Prize at Havana.² It also won the International Jury Award at the 2007 São Paulo International Film Festival and the Golden Sun Award at the 2007 Biarritz International Festival of Latin American Cinema.¹¹

Critics received it warmly. Rotten Tomatoes records an 88% Tomatometer from 26 reviews and a 79% Popcornmeter score from more than 2,500 audience ratings, with a critics' consensus calling it "an offbeat charmer" with "a poignant social message."³ French critics were divided in tone: L'Humanité praised its rigor, satirical accuracy, and tenderness toward its characters, while Les Inrockuptibles dismissed it as festival-circuit poverty poetry.¹² Reviewers noted the film's treatment of poverty through characterization rather than shock imagery, and its portrait of a town whose poor are treated, in one critic's phrase, about as well as a backed-up toilet.¹³^•³

Legacy

The film is regarded as one of the iconic works of Uruguayan cinema and the most prominent Uruguayan film since Whisky (2004).⁷^•¹⁴ It changed the professional lives of both its makers: for Charlone it fulfilled the ambition of filming in Uruguay, and for Troncoso, who was working a day job and could only rehearse after 7 p.m., it began a career that led to about a dozen Brazilian films and a TV Globo telenovela.⁶^•¹⁵ A remastered version returned to Uruguayan cinemas in 2026, timed near a papal visit to Uruguay by Pope Leo XIV, and Fernández said of the film that it had not aged at all.⁷^•⁶

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026