Vladimir Cruz
Tito is 23 years old with a mother who loves him and a car that allows him to earn an honest living. His neighbors see him as a formal and educated boy. Nobody knows that behind that façade hides someone with a nihilistic vision of life. And that involves committing terrible acts for which he may have to pay someday. But Tito does not care about the future. There is only the present.
A thief breaks into the home of a famous writer, unknowingly stealing what turns out to be the only manuscript of an upcoming story. In desperate need of money, he submits it to a contest...
The killing of a fiery young teacher sets Detective Mario Conde on the trail of a drug kingpin with ties to the high school he once attended.
A young American boy is trying to break into the acting business, and goes to Cuba during a film festival.
Faced with the emptiness and lack of rational explanation for many of the problems of the contemporary world, it sometimes seems that the only solution is to take refuge in the instincts ... and instincts lead us to sex. At least this is the exit that find the protagonists of this story: sex as a shock to stay alive, the manipulation of others as a way to ward off impotence and reaffirm their personalities torn by loneliness. But the result is ephemeral and the attempt has unforeseen consequences.
In a reinterpretation of Madame Bovary set on contemporary Mexico City, Emilia, a middle class housewife, tries to deal with the monotony of her life. One day, she loses the two things which makes everything beareable: her lover and her credit card.
Determined not to simply get married, start a family, and grow old like the rest of the girls in her town, an aspiring Cuban diva sets out to launch a career as a singer.
An unclaimed fortune, grown for centuries in a British bank account, becomes a potential windfall for Bernadito Castiñeiras and the residents of the tiny village of Yaragüey, Cuba. To receive his massive inheritance check, Bernadito must prove his lineage to the Castiñeiras nuns who first populated the region. In an isolated and impoverished town where many residents share the same surname, a feud breaks out between the "Castiñeiras" and "Castiñeyras" families.
A light-hearted and high-spirited story, full of spice, sensuality and romance, Viva Zapato tells the tale of Dolores, a beautiful Cuban dancer who decides to leave her failing marriage and open a restaurant by the beach with her aunt from Brazil. When her aunt sends her a pair of shoes instead of the money to start up the restaurant, she angrily sells the useless gift for spare change. Her dream fades away - until she discovers that the money was hidden in the heel. The zany search for the shoes begins, as she follows the footsteps through the lively streets of Havana, running into the quirky, colorful characters that bring Viva Zapato and Dolores' dream.
At a rundown bus station in rural Cuba, the line of passengers waiting just keeps getting longer. The problem is that every bus that passes by is already full. Their only hope is to wait for the station's bus to be fixed. As the disparate group settles in, relationships start forming between the passengers: Emilio, a young engineer, becomes smitten with a beautiful young woman who is en route to meet her Spanish fiancé, a blind man gets support from the others to go to the head of the line. Frustration and disorder reign when the one bus brakes down and no one can leave. Resigned to working together, the group magically transforms the station into a beautiful place where no one wants to leave.
Like her mother before her, beautiful Sissy wants to be a dancer at the Tropicana, Havana's famous cabaret. But her father, Candido, forbids her to do so because of his ongoing grudge against Armando, his former rival and choreographer at the nightclub.
Lorenzo, a Cuban policeman specializing in grave robberies is sent to Havana to investigate the death of a Havana-born German national, Hermann (or German in Spanish) found in a famous grave. Lorenzo recounts his findings to the police chief (Major Anancio) as he investigates Dora, an elevator operator and Herrmann's landlady, Aguila and Silvia (who work for Cultural Affairs), Chrissy (a British-born Socialist Internationalist lover), Xiomara (Hermann's mother and a local drag queen as well), a dwarf, and a false Guatemalan who had raped Chrissy during her internationalist "love/sex campaign" in Guatemala. These are the main, but not the only characters, one must absolutely follow to make sense of the plot.
Havana, Cuba, 1979. Flamboyantly gay artist Diego (Jorge Perugorría) attempts to seduce the straight and strait-laced David, an idealistic young communist, and fails dismally. But David conspires to become friends with Diego so he can monitor the artist's subversive life for the state. As Diego and David discuss politics, individuality and personal expression in Castro's Cuba, a genuine friendship develops between the two. But can it last? Strawberry and Chocolate became an instant hit when it was released, and has become a classic of Cuban cinema due to its charming and authentic exploration of a connection between two people under historical circumstances that seem levelled against them.
The story of students of a high school in Havana in the 60's, where love, politics, and moral contradictions appeared. A shy country boy gets caught between the peer pressure of his buddies and his love for an overweight, strong willed but likable girl.
