What it is about
Mayito, a boy from a comfortable background, gets lost during the May Day march and ends up in La Tinta, a slum near the Plaza de la Revolución. There he meets a classmate he had barely known until then and, over the course of an adventure through streets very different from his own, discovers the other Cuba in which Carlos lives, far from the luxurious house in Miramar. The story is built on the relationship between two children from opposite social strata and the inequalities that separate them.
How it was made
Directed by Ian Padrón, the film stars children from the La Colmenita children's theatre company. It was produced by Cuba's Ministry of Culture, the Cuban Radio and Television Institute and the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Arts and Industry. The screenplay, credited to Felipe Espinet with the collaboration of the director, is based on a story by Padrón. Alejandro Pérez served as cinematographer and René Baños composed the original music together with the group Nacional Electrónica. The shoot took place in a slum in western Havana, grounding the story in a real setting.
Reception and legacy
The film won several festival awards, including the audience prize at the Traverse City Film Festival in Michigan, and honours at the Havana International Festival of New Latin American Cinema, among them the Glauber Rocha award and the UNICEF prize. It also received the Spondylus Trophy for best fiction at the Lima Film Festival. It was selected as Cuba's entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards, though it did not make the final shortlist.
Stills
Original Cinematopedia text based on Wikipedia (es) and Wikipedia (en) and Wikidata.