15th Minnesota Cuban Film Festival, February 28-April 4, 2024

Minnesota Cuban Film Festival (MCCF) is very proud to announce its 15th year of bringing some of the best films produced in Cuba to Minnesota.

MCFF strives to feature films that address the achievements and challenges of the Cuban people. The festival highlights diverse and challenging films of social change, human struggle and the boldness of the human spirit. The goal is to offer Minnesotans a chance to learn about and appreciate Cuban films and culture. It serves as a reminder of the onerous burden that the blockade inflicts on the Cuban people, which must end with the re-establishment of respectful diplomatic relations.

The opening night of the festival is Wednesday, 2/28. Thereafter the festival will be on Thursdays through 4/4.

This year’s film lineup offers a mix of fiction and documentary features:
LA CAJA NEGRA (THE BLACK BOX) The U.S. premiere of Cuban filmmaker Enrique “Kiki” Alvarez’s latest feature paints a slow-burning love story set in the years immediately following the Cuban Revolution in January of 1959.

RIQUIMBILE O EL MUNDO DE NELSITO (NELSITO’S WORLD) This film revolves around a young man of humble origins who has an unnamed disability who lives with his mother, a divorced artist.
• CASTRO’S SPIES This documentary is a thrilling true story of a selected group of Cuban spies sent undercover to the US in the 1990s. From their recruitment, training and eventual capture on US soil; this film peers into a secret world of false identities, love affairs and betrayal. It gives a rare glimpse into the shadowy world of a spy — where the stakes are life and death.
• VIVA This film’s hero is a gay hairdresser who dreams of becoming a drag entertainer at the nightclub where he coifs the noisy, squabbling divas. His mother is dead and his father abandoned him, he lives in a slum, and is watched over by the club’s tough but caring star, an aging drag queen known as Mama. His father, a former boxer released from prison who is rumored to have killed a man, reappears and his initial reaction to his son’s homosexuality and fondness for drag is all too predictable.
• Sisters of the Heart This documentary covers the origins of the Oblate Sisters of Providence and it is dedicated to the work of the Oblates in Cuba. Religious education – Catholic – was accompanied by a requirement for preparation to face a society full of discrimination based on skin color. From the beginning, the education of black girls and boys was its main mission. And both in the United States and in Cuba (1900-1961) they faced a racist and classist society.
• Habana Blues This is a Spanish and Cuban film by director Benito Zambrano which tells the story of two young musicians in Cuba, Ruy and Tito, whose music is a mix of traditional Cuban music and more modern music such as rap. They get a chance at an international breakthrough through a Spanish record company, but they would have to change their Cuba-themed lyrics to cater to an international audience. Ruy considers this a betrayal of his country and his art, whereas Tito recognizes the financial necessity of it. Art versus commerce, nationalism versus globalism, and communism versus capitalism are some of the themes of the film.

The 15th. Minnesota Cuban Film Festival is organized by the Minnesota Cuba Committee, with the collaboration of MSP Film Society, and ICAIC (Cuban Film Institute)