SECTION: Focus

Việt Nam ở châu Âu l Vietnam in Europe – the Vietnamese diaspora in Germany, the Czech Republic and Poland. History and narratives that lay between solidarity and the fear of deportation as well as the Cold War and military disputes; supplemented by stories about migration, flight and a new homeland.

12 Y Malecón, Habana

12 Y Malecón, Habana

12 Y Malecón, Habana

Elí Roland Sachs
Germany / 2012 / 52 min
A student's life in Cuba: a modern apartment block, built to house a hall of residence, stands directly by the waterfront. Constructed as part of the national scholarship programme, the building is a world within itself, a world that represents a ...
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Habana

Habana

Habana

Édouard Salier
France / 2014 / 22 min
Havana: The western suburbs of the city are occupied by foreign forces, as the situation in the city deteriorates from day to day. The occupier is in the process of constructing a huge bridge intended to connect the island with the mainland, though ...
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51 Malecón

51 Malecón

51 Malecón

Jean-Guillaume Caplain, Francis Delfour
Canada, France, Cuba / 2015 / 42 min
Havana, Cuba. An unusual fourteen-story apartment block soars above the surrounding historical buildings. A poetic snap-shot of the everyday life that plays out in the monolith's stairwells and corridors, its imagery and sounds so serene that they ...
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Return to Ithaca

Return to Ithaca

Retour à Ithaque

Laurent Cantet
France, Belgium / 2014 / 96 min
Five friends, four men and a woman, are reunited on a rooftop terrace in the centre of Havana as they celebrate Amadeo's first return to Cuba in sixteen years. As the sun sets the atmosphere of merriment slowly crosses over into sentimental nostalgia ...
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Havanna Mi Amor

Havanna Mi Amor

Havanna Mi Amor

Uli Gaulke
Germany / 2000 / 80 min
Telenovelas are wildly popular in Cuba, not merely due to the love and passion that characterise Latin-American serial dramas, but also owing to the fact that they offer a form of escapism from the struggles of life. This documentary film follows the ...
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Transit Havana

Transit Havana

Transit Havana

Daniel Abma
The Netherlands, Germany / 2016 / 89 min
Three Cubans speak of the reality of being transgender, and the long journey of sex reassignment surgery, on this Communist-governed Caribbean island, whose role as a trailblazer in this field remains largely unknown, despite the efforts of prominent ...
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Carlos

Carlos

Carlos

Humberto López y Guerra
GDR / 1966 / 12 min
An attempted American invasion is repelled by the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces. Many young Cuban servicemen are injured in the process however, including Carlos, who is transported far from home, to the GDR, for treatment. Hospital nurse Bärbel ...
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Preludio 11

Preludio 11

Preludio 11

Kurt Maetzig
GDR, Cuba / 1963 / 86 min
Americans have a plan to end the Caribbean island's socialist experiment; under the codename “Preludio 11” a handful of Cuban exiles are to penetrate inland and blow up a strategically important bridge. It soon comes to light however that ...
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Hotel Nueva Isla

Hotel Nueva Isla

Hotel Nueva Isla

Irene Gutiérrez
Cuba, Spain / 2014 / 71 min
The Grand Hotel in the heart of Havana is in danger of collapse. Only one last inhabitant remains within the crumbling walls, convinced there are ever more valuable objects from the hotel's former guests to be found.
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Casa Blanca

Casa Blanca

Casa Blanca

Aleksandra Maciuszek
Poland, Mexico, Cuba / 2015 / 62 min
In Casa Blanca, a secluded fishing village in the port of Havana, lives seventy-six-year-old Nelsea together with her thirty-seven-year-old son Vladimir, who suffers from Down syndrome. Vladimir is the only person who takes care of ailing Nelsea, ...
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The Companion

The Companion

El Acompañante

Pavel Giroud
Cuba, Panama, France, Colombia, Venezuela / 2015 / 104 min
Having failed a doping test, former boxing champion Horacio is required to serve as a mentor at the Los Cocos sanatorium to Daniel, an unpredictable HIV patient. The latter however is determined to escape and spend his last days in freedom.
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The Wall of Words

The Wall of Words

La Pared de las Palabras

Fernando Pérez Valdés
Cuba / 2014 / 97 min
A mentally and physically disabled man is cared for by his mother. She visits him daily at the psychiatric ward and takes him home as and when she can. It's a broken home however, and his condition is deteriorating rapidly. The doctors prepare her to ...
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The King of Havana

The King of Havana

El Rey de la Habana

Agustí Villaronga
Spain, Dominican Republic / 2015 / 125 min
Cuba in the nineties. An adolescent escapes from a juvenile detention home and hits the streets of Havana. With a combination of sex, rum and a somewhat grim sense of humour he fights of the recurrent sense of hunger, as he manages to end up in ...
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The Enemy

The Enemy

El Enemigo

Aldemar Matías
Cuba / 2015 / 26 min
The enemy is the mosquito, carrier of the dengue fever. With a combination of individual commitment and all the state-sponsored support they can muster, the members of this fumigation brigade pursue the foe across the ramshackle housing stock that ...
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Havanna Esperando

Havanna Esperando

Havanna Esperando

Markus Kloth
Germany / 2012 / 6 min
A chance to step back and take a deep breath: HAVANNA ESPERANDO is a poem of the moment. Whilst the camera searches, taking its bearings from fleeting images, coasting by the city's walls of crumbling plaster and lingering longer on the occasional ...
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Lorenza, la radio y tú

Lorenza, la radio y tú

Lorenza, la radio y tú

Roya Eshraghi Safaifard
Cuba / 2015 / 12 min
Lorenza is an elderly inhabitant of the Sierra Maestra mountain range, where life is a daily struggle for survival. The most pressing issue she faces however is whether, and then when, she'll be able to listen to her favourite radio series. Her old ...
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Perros

Perros

Perros

Pedro Pío
Cuba / 2012 / 28 min
Dogs in Havana: they belong to a variety of social classes, with each and every one of them enjoying a different standard of living, from audacious opulence to desperate poverty. You thus might say that that the expression every dog has its day ...
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Polski

Polski

Polski

Rubén Rojas Cuauhtemoc
Cuba, Mexico / 2015 / 21 min
Twenty-year-old Yoemil inherits his father's Polski Fiat and resolves to return the car to working order, hoping both to reconnect with his father, with whom he craves a closer relationship, as well as use the car as a springboard to a brighter ...
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Mockingbird

Mockingbird

Sinsonte

Gabriel Reyes
Cuba / 2014 / 25 min
During morning roll call a youngster dreams of being free as a bird, swaying his arms alone at sea. Later an elderly gentleman sits motionless in a wheelchair, alone on an abandoned street, only to be encountered by the boy, who takes him on an ...
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