Toronto Film Festival Dailies

Text and photos: Leopoldo Soto

Carlos Lechuga presented at the 41st Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) "Santa and Andrés" in the film world, curated by Diana Sanchez.

Lechuga, graduated from the school of San Antonio de los Baños, provides in its second work preceded by "Melassa" (2013, awarded in Málaga). A year later, also awarded in Malaga, through Sagae ( Writers Assoc.) for the screenplay for "Santa and Andres” .

History happens during the seventies. A dissident, homosexual writer, fictional character that could be a paralell to Reynaldo Arenas.

Prior to political event, Andrés, performed by Eduardo Martinez is isolated in an almost desert to spot, by the sea.

It is guarded by Santa, sent by the Cuban government to ensure that does not alter the event.

Political and human conflicts are intertwined. Guarded and vigilant, they identify and question.

Location and actors in a low production set, and as expressed by the director himself: "without censorship, while filming on the island"; recreates the problems that lived at that time, and friendship that is triggered between the antagonists in the beginning, which somehow opens a door to reconciliation.

Produced by Colombia, France and Ibermedia; by a graduate of San Antonio de los Baños, the school most emblematic of the island, and the most important and influential not only in Latin America but throughout the world: and becomes a transcendent criticism.

Certainly is not only an important step, not only for the development of this Cuban filmmaker, but for a Cuban, and latinamerican, cinema made with few elements, which examines contemporary issues of a society that rarely had echoed their expressions. One of the outstanding films of the festival, showing the evolution, of the School of San Antonio de los Baños; which was also selected for San Sebastian.

Paradoxically, at the same Toronto film festival, plural, and inclusive festival, "Snowden"  Oliver Stone`s project; whose plot conversely, tells the story of agent who revealed in 2013 to international media, the spying of the CIA and the National Security Agency (NSA) to their own citizens, then take refuge in an antagonistic country, and perhaps more repressive, as is Russia.

A dissident, homosexual Cuban novelist strikes up an unlikely rapport with the government watcher assigned to keep him from speaking during an upcoming political rally.