Synopsis
CURRENCY takes place in a small town two weeks after all banking, credit, and electronic monetary records disappear (a “Green-out”). People only have the food in their homes, the money in their pockets, and fading faith that their bank accounts will come back.
A Cuban immigrant father and his adult daughter run the town’s gas station and realize that they have the two things everyone needs as the country is plunged into crisis: food and gasoline. But the family finds itself deeply divided about what to do with its newfound "wealth."
Javier, the Cuban immigrant owner of the Maximart, takes power as a benevolent, but self-anointed dictator. As cash runs out and the country is plunged into chaos, he accepts payment from the town on personal credit – managing the food lines outside his store the same way he saw them managed in Havana during El Tiempo de los Flacos. But his family is not sure that sharing their stockpiled goods with the community is the right thing to do.
His daughter, Carolina, catches him watering down her son’s food to keep enough Gerbers to feed other families. Her husband and Javier’s business partner, Mark, sees how much their supply of fuel is worth in the rapidly devolving outside world.
Seventeen days into the Green-out, their food stores are dwindling, and the lines outside their market are a mile long. As electric utilities, factories, and telecommunications begin to go offline, Mark sees that with every gallon they sell for an IOU, they are losing the means to eat, the leverage to trade for his son’s medication, and the ability to get away if things get really bad. Rather than give away what they have for the worthless promises of future cash Javier is collecting, Mark decides to keep what they have in the family - even if it means robbing his own family store.
As supply chains shut down, Javier sends Mark to trade gas for a town’s worth of food from a local farm. When Mark returns with a gun instead of a truckload of produce and tries to take the gas by force, Carolina is caught in the middle of a conflict of ideals, strength, and will. It’s she who will take charge to decide the fate of their family.
Conceived of in collaboration with a world-class economist, Currency is a reminder that most of what we put our faith in - money, governments, and laws - only have power if we believe in them. And when that faith gets shaken, civilization trembles.