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After years of living under Fidel Castro's government, Cuba has fallen into a state of darkness and oppression. Freedom has been stripped from its people and daily life has been punctured by harassment and executions at the hands of Castro's National Police. After his childhood friend is violently killed in an altercation with a Castro sympathizer, 21 year old Reinaldo realizes he must find a way out and regain his freedom at any cost.

El Balsero

Reinaldo must find a way out of Cuba's repressive authoritarianism.

Centered on the remarkable letters by José Lezama Lima to his sister living in exile in the United States, this feature length documentary tells the story of the Cuban writer’s life and work. Weaving together the public and the private, the literary and the political, ultimately to focus how the writer’s voice, at first amplified by the revolution’s cultural policies, was ultimately silenced by the absence of creative freedom in Cuba during its most tumultuous decades – beginning with the publication of his literary masterpiece Paradiso, a novel with a strong homoerotic content that clashed with the government’s contemporaneous campaign of institutional homophobia. Once hailed as Cuba’s most influential writer, Lezama was censored, ostracized, forbidden to travel outside Cuba. His books were removed from libraries and bookstores. The film establishes the greatness of Lezama Lima’s literature and recounts the tragic end of the great Cuban writer, alone and silenced at his home in Trocadero Street, as well as his posthumous redemption by the very government that crushed him. The voice of Lezama Lima is provided by Alfred Molina, the music is composed by Arturo Sandoval.

Letters to Eloisa

Through letters to his sister Eloisa, legendary poet José Lezama Lima reveals his complex, tragic links to Cuba's revolution.

Q&amp;A with Letters to Eloisa director Adriana Bosch

Letters to Eloisa Q&A

United States of America

Letters to Eloisa (preceded by El Balsero)

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