Vladimir Cruz

As Havana slowly revolves through the year, wistful detective Mario Conde probes the sultry heart of the city to investigate dark and deadly crimes.

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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.

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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...

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A lesbian, an aspiring actor, an aspiring singer, a low-class marriage, a neighborhood community and 2 renowned directors have memorable less-than-24-hour-long experiences while living in/visiting the capital of Cuba.

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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.

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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.

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An actress moves into a retirement home, where she soon discovers that she can make new friends, have fun, and even fall in love.

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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.

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Ernesto Guevara, known as 'Che', leads a group of Cuban exiles under Fidel Castro in a revolution to overthrow Fulgencio Batista, the dictator of Cuba.

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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.

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At an unspecified event, everyone votes in favor. Unexpectedly, there is one vote against: Nicanor O’Donnell’s. When Nicanor goes to the bathroom during the intermission, some curious delegates follow him, eager to find out why he dared to vote against. The suspicion that someone is locked in a stall, listening to everything, turns their sympathy into mistrust toward Nicanor. But the one locked in the stall is also a poor wretch.

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After the death of don Lucio, his widow Eloísa asks one of her neighbours to use the latter's house in order to hold the dead man's wake, since Eloísa's own house is too small for that. From then on, a series of strange happenings take place during a single day.

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Tony is a Cuban-American Metals trader. One sunny morning, while fishing off Key West-Florida, he finds the wreck of a makeshift raft floating close to the beach. The rafters names were carved on the wood of the boat (Pablo and Mariana). Tony travels to Cuba to find the Family of the rafters to tell them what he had found. This journey also becomes a discovery of his own Cuban roots. Tony finds the family and, shocked and surprised, finds the beautiful Mariana whom he presumed had died at sea, and she awakens in him his true destiny.

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A caustic satire of many of the 'types' found in Spanish society.

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A chess columnist ends in prison when one of his columns is mistakenly seen as a subversive attack. From there he invents a game of war and strategy and a cellmate who escapes uses it initiating a real revolution.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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A group of Italian people go to Cuba, for various different reasons. One of them would like to remake Vittorio De Sica's The Bicycle Thief. But it won't be easy.

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In 1979 Cuba, flamboyant gay artist Diego attempts to seduce straitlaced David, an idealistic young communist, and fails dismally. But David conspires to be "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.

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1925. José Raúl Capablanca, a famous Cuban chess player and employee of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, arrives in Moscow for an international chess tournament. The trip, taking place under Machado's dictatorship, casts doubt on his future in this position. The film shows Capablanca's dramatic matches with Lasker, Tartakower, and Bogolubov, his tragic love for Bolshoi Theatre ballerina Sasha Mozhaeva, and a simultaneous game in which he lost to the very young Mikhail Botvinnik.

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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.

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