Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión (EICTV)

It is a hot night in Cuba. Elizabeth de Victória, aged 22, is about to make her long-awaited debut on the stage of the biggest drag show in the entire province of Artemisa. But before she gives a live performance, she must confront all the difficulties preceding the show. A ruthless clock counts the minutes to the start of the show and the preparations of other drag queens reveal all the shortcomings of the debutant. Comments about the unknown girl can be heard whispered around the dressing room. The atmosphere is becoming denser as the successive drag queens finish their performances and everyone is awaiting the visiting debutant.

Nadia is a Haitian biologist living in Cuba, researching local wildlife. Until she receives a visit from deep waters, and the Cuban forest begins to speak in other languages. On that day, Haiti never seemed so far from Nadia.

Susana Barriga’s documentary, the illusion, begins with violence. A long shot reveals a man standing on a street corner, his features indiscernible in the night. He moves out of the camera’s line of vision, but the filmmaker, persistent, moves with him as the jostling of the camera marks her steps. As we learn moments later, the man in the distance is Susana’s father – and this is the clearest image of him we will have. Suddenly, an angry British man demands that Susana cease filming. Susana protests in heavily accented English, “He is my father!” Glimpses of a man’s torso are followed by blurred images as the camera spins rapidly over surfaces. The image cuts to black. A new male voice asks in carefully spaced out words if Susana would like him to call the police. When she doesn’t respond immediately, he speaks louder, as though volume would compensate for the language difference. She gives her name; she refuses the offer of an ambulance.

Alfa, a famous porn actor, must deal with his fears, insecurities and memories when he begins work on a new film without Yerry, his former partner in life and porn. On his first day of shooting without him, Alfa tries to act as in the past but can things be like before?

In a fumigation centre in Havana, Mayelín has the ungrateful task of fining citizens who infringe sanitary regulations. Apart from fighting dengue and disciplining her workers, she is, herself, under pressure from one of her supervisors. Mayelín must learn to find her place within a stressful and sometimes aggressive work environment.

The city dissolves itself in the same way it was created. With each movement, its inhabitants are preparing to leave to another place, while forming the newton image.

After committing an act of revenge, Katya experiences the first symptoms of her transformation.

A mother and her son, make a living from the sea from their quayside home on Santiago de Cuba bay. In the course of the film, their very strong and strange relationship is revealed in all its complexity.

Under the threat of a hurricane pending over the city, Lubrini is looking for his lover, who disappeared in the streets of Havana.

In the dense night, when the moon lifts the tide, beings trapped in the daily life of water scarcity, they are hypnotized by the powers of Yemaya, the goddess of the sea.

Hakan does not wish to return to Brazil, but doesn’t know how to tell Lissy that they can no longer offer her a dream life outside of Cuba. Hakan grapples with indecision when Lissy discovers that they have kept from her a chance to get off the island. Out of options that allow them to stay, Hakan must accept the new person they have become in order to return home.

Dani, a young Cuban, lives in Havana with his grandmother Yuya. When his girlfriend becomes pregnant, the young woman's family demands an abortion... because Dani is black.

Every weekend at an illegal drag show in the suburbs of Havana, Sebastián, a 17-year-old Cuban teenager, transforms into 'Mila Caos', his empowered, flamboyant alter-ego. When he returns to his daytime self, Sebastián suffers from his mother's indifference, dreaming that one day she will see him on stage for who he truly is.

As the international press pours into Havana, Cuba to report on the death of Fidel Castro, a little girl proudly holds a large cardboard sign over her head on the Plaza de la Revolución. In a fascinating shot lasting almost 12 minutes, we watch this girl-braids, red dress, white knee socks, fighting against the wind-as she experiences her moment in the spotlight. We can't see what's written on the sign because she's being filmed from behind. Armed with cameras and cell phones, the people around her are taking countless photos and uninvited selfies with her. As the minutes tick by, our unease grows. Placed in the role of an ignorant spectator, we have time to contemplate the omnipresence of the camera-and we become desperate to know what's written on that sign.

A version of El Estatola del Campo's poetic Faust of the Poet (1886) integrates the major trilogy of Argentine gaucho poetry, is proposed here in a faithful version and integral.

On the stage of a destroyed theater, we saw a play in which Elizabeth, Mercedes and Crisalida, three black women at different stages of life, relive everything they suffered from the interpretation of their own conflicts in the form of inner monologues.

Diosdado and Milagros travel long distances with the company of their horse to sell fruits and vegetables. "At dawn" tells a day in the life of this Cuban couple.