The Best Movies From/About Cuba

When her country is taken over by socialist revolutionaries, a wealthy woman can't bear to give up all of her wealth and possessions to the new government, so she hides her jewels in one of the 12 chairs of a dining-room set. After her death, her nephew finds out what she had done and, since the chairs had been "nationalized" and are now in the possession of a dozen different people, he sets out to track them down and get the jewels he believes rightfully belong to him.

A young man attempts to fight the system in an entertaining account of bureaucracy amok and the tyranny of red tape.

A pious plantation owner attempts to teach Christianity to 12 of his slaves by inviting them to participate in a reenactment of the Last Supper.

Teresa is overwhelmed: with a husband, three young sons, a job as a crew leader in a textile factory, and volunteer commitments as cultural leader of her union. Her husband, Ramón, wants more of her attention; her feelings are mixed, wanting domestic peace, feeling responsibilities to the revolution, and wanting to control her own life beyond doing dirty dishes. They separate; he begins an affair. When he wants a reconciliation, she asks what his response would be if she'd had an affair too. "But men are different," is his reply. He's failed her test, and to hold on to independence and self-respect, she remains uncompromising and hard-edged.

A vampire family from Cuba is preparing for a showdown between the USA vampires and the Eastern European vampires. But with the aid of a scientist, they need a type of vaccination where they can live in daylight.

A theater director and script-writer falls for a female worker from the Havana docks, but his machismo, social and working conflicts, and the Cuban woman's condition interfere with their relationship.

Before the military coup in Cuba, a group of people have a clandestine printing press, used to print subversive pamphlets against the government.

Story of two men who are opposites: one gay, the other straight; one a fierce communist, the other a fierce individualist; one suspicious, the other accepting; and how they come to love each other.

It is a satire about life in Cuba. The members of a funeral procession and some truck drivers who need to take the same route begin to talk about God and the world and they end up discovering that life for both groups has many similarities and many differences, depending on the point of view.

Three characters in present-day Havana must choose between clinging to their self-restricting beliefs, or getting rid of them to live more freely. Ballerina Mariana has promised God celibacy if she gets the role of "Giselle"; Social-worker Julia always faints after hearing a certain word; and pot-smoking percussionist Elpidio was abandoned by his mother, coincidentally named Cuba, some time ago and has not yet gotten over the loss.

A desperate group of people wait at a rundown Cuban transit station for the next bus to arrive. The problem is, it never shows up. While a number of busses pass by the station, and others that are either full or at the end of the line stop by, it soon becomes obvious that the bus everyone was waiting for has left them high and dry. While one of the would-be passengers, Emilio, uses his downtime to win the affections of the beautiful Jacqueline, most of the rest decide that if they're stuck without anywhere to go, they might as well make the station a better place to wait, and they begin forming a plan to turn the decrepit bus terminal into a showplace that people would look forward to visiting.

Dawn breaks in La Habana, and as the day advances we follow the simple lives of ten ordinary Cubans, with only sounds and images accompanied by music.

Two Cuban friends play in a blues band in La Habana. When a Spanish music producer offers them a contract to record an album and build a career in Europe, they must decide whether to stay in their birthplace with their loved ones or to grab the chance of leaving Cuba.

A Cuban man cycles through his opinions and memories as the threat of foreign invasion intensifies and the rest of his family moves to Miami.

Mr. Arturo, an old rich Spanishman who arrives to Havana to marry Yoli, dies suddenly in bed. Yoli's family, afraid of losing all the money, convinces her ex-boyfriend Papito to go to Spain and get the money. Papito will have to be clever enough to deceive everybody and succeed in Spain.

Like her mother before her, beautiful Sissy wants to be a dancer at the Tropicana, Havana's famous cabaret. But her truck driving father, Candido, forbids her to do so because of his ongoing grudge against Armando, his former rival and choreographer at the nightclub. When Candido and his friend Promedio accidentally run Sergito over, Promedio sees the star-shaped mole on the boy's buttock, identical to Candido's. Much to Sissy's delight and to Promedio's dismay for fear of incest, Candido takes the boy home, unaware that Sergito is his son and therefore Sissy's brother. Promedio's worries are confirmed when the two youngsters fall madly in love.

Gustavo is a young Havana Communist who believes in the revolution; he hopes for a scholarship to study aeronautical engineering in Prague. But his faith in the new Cuba is tested: his father, a psychiatrist, can make four times as much playing piano at a hotel for foreigners; his sweetheart, Yolanda, wants a career as a dancer and longs for the riches of Miami; his younger brother Bobby simply wants to play rock music, and as a result is in constant trouble with the authorities. When Bobby takes a shocking step of revolt and Gustavo is refused service at a foreigners-only bar, the contradictions in his resolve to become a "new man" push him to the breaking point.

Cecilia, a Cuban girl of mixed race in violent 19th-century Cuba, is raised by her mother and grandmother as a courtesan. Soon, pale-skinned Cecilia catches the eye of the estate owner's son, Leonardo. Cecilia bows to Leonardo's demands provided he agrees to shelter a wounded member of the resistance movement at his home. Leonardo's wealthy father, Cándido de Gamboa, arranges the engagement of his son to a white girl of their own class. Cecilia tries to stop the wedding with tragic results.

Four vignettes about the lives of the Cuban people set during the pre-revolutionary era.

A group of slackers face an army of zombies. The Cuban government and media claim the living dead are dissidents revolting against the government.

The metamorphoses of Juan Quin Quin, in turns bullfighter, guerrilla fighter and sacristan.

A satire about the life of the Cuban people. Alicia, a culture instructor, is sent to a small town "Maravillas", which is itself an exaggerated, but very ingenious reflection of the real Cuba. The adventures that she has there are almost as crazy and senseless as the ones lived by the other Alice (in Wonderland), reflecting the indoctrination, coercion, absolutims, and many other everyday problems in Cuban society.

Traces episodes in the lives of three Cuban women, each named Lucía, from three different historical periods: the Cuban war of independence (with Spain), the 1930s, and the 1960s.

Young Doctor Ana lives alone because she couldn't bear to leave Cuba when her family sailed away on a raft to the US. Ernesto lives in his car with his belongings in a small case, traveling from embassy to embassy trying to fulfill his dream of leaving Cuba. These Star-crossed lovers long to be together, they are pulled apart by different dreams rooted in different countries. In his directorial debut, Alejandro Brugués offers his personal view on the insistently revisited theme in Cuban art and literature - emigration and the laceration that it implies.

In Havana, a post office branch is more than a place of bureaucratic rules and regulations to ensure effective public services. This is where Carla Perez works. A young dreamer, this government employee transforms boredom into a 'crossroads of feeling in writing'. More than merely sending and receiving letters, she aims to help her companions in finding happiness and love. Such good will can not go un-rewarded. Her exiled parents in Miami entered her name in the yearly U.S. immigration lottery. Unexpectedly, she receives a notice for her interview to get the 'green card'. Now she will have to opt between a future of her own in Cuba, and a future planned by others in Miami.