Lázara Herrera

Set in Cuba in early 1959, although the historical context is deliberately avoided in its epic backdrop, the story follows the persecution of a poor guy who owes a few pesos to a loan shark and a thug who swear to get even with him, not so much because of the unpaid debt as because they don't want to set a precedent. The man's name is Miguel, and he seems to care as much as Santiago Nasar that the killers are hot on his heels with their half-tone shoes. On the day of his "double crime" (the story recreates those 24 hours), he has a couple of drinks in a bar, argues with his ex-lover, has sex with a young prostitute, puts up with a scolding from his friend Pedro for being negligent, walks, urinates, goes to bed...

A tribute to Santiago Álvarez, a great innovator in the language of Cuban newsreel images, presented by the ICAIC over the course of thirty years. This unique figure in Latin American cinema is reconstructed. Told as a game of Chinese boxes (documentaries within documentaries, authors within authors, images within images), Álvarez's obsession is revealed to be identical to that of his disciples: to confront the reality of Cuba with other realities, staging aesthetic operations that are nevertheless political operations, always in favor of the Revolution.