The story of the world's greatest hoaxer. An unprecedented glimpse into the life and bizarre career of Alan Abel, the notorious media prankster who has made a name for himself several times over with stunts that are just ridiculous enough to be believable, especially to a media that feeds on salacious stories. In this loving portrait of an eccentric father, Alan's daughter, Jenny, takes the audience on a roller coaster ride through the myriad of elaborate hoaxes and schemes that Abel pulled off over the years, all of which were designed to provoke, amuse and make people question everything that they see, hear or read.
Abel raises Cain, when your profession is making fun of everything
A cheap motel room, the one that always appears in American movies. Inside, a sixty year-old obese white man reads an agenda where he writes his daily labors while chewing a piece of banana. The previous one is one of the scenes of this curious documentary and the protagonist is Alan Abel, the most important American hoaxer of all time. Let appearances not deceive you.
In Abel raises Cain, the sweet voice of Jenny Abel, the daughter of this ingenious provocateur, narrates a documentary that contrasts the daily and intimate images of his father with the epic television footage that show the unimaginable pranks with which Abel deceived a whole country. Among them are the creation of the National Association for the Elimination of Breastfeeding, a School for Beggars, a Cruise Line for Euthanasia, or the organization of a false marriage between a former African President accused of genocide with — yes … — his own daughter.
Some of his jokes and pranks took years to discover as such. With them, Alan Abel tested the sense of humor of an entire nation and questioned even the most embedded manners of the stablishment represented in the American mass media. To watch Abel raises cain is an intimate way to get to know Abel’s body of work. He dedicates his life to joking with the phenomena that surrounds him as a way to educate and make people think differently on the most sensitive issues of society.