Set in San Antonio De Los Baños, a sleepy town in inland Cuba, and shot in langurous black and white tableaux, The Oceans Are the Real Continents traces the stories of three generations of townspeople.
Lacerated by the Caribbean rain, Edith (Edith Ybarra Clara) and Alex (Alexander Diego) are both actors, an artsy couple in their 30s with an on-again, off-again relationship; they share moments of love, playfulness and resentment, grow apart and reconvene. Milagros (Milagros Llanes Martínez) is a lonely elder making a post-retired wage by selling manì (Cuban roasted peanut cones). She lives a quiet life of mundane tasks and memories from a long-gone past. Finally, Frank and Alain are two little boys who imitate the men around them and dream of emigrating to the United States and playing for the Yankees together.
An exquisite love poem to Cuba.
Patricia Boero, The Film Verdict
October 3 & 5: Q&A with director Tommaso Santambrogio
Alexander Diego, Edith Ybarra Clara, Frank Ernesto Lam, Alain Alain Alfonso González, Milagros Llanes Martínez
Cuba/Italy
2023
Panorama
In Spanish with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits
Executive Producer
Ricardo Figueredo Oliva, Marcello Mustilli, Alessandra Limentani
Producer
Marica Stocchi, Gianluca Arcopinto
Screenwriter
Tommaso Santambrogio
Cinematography
Lorenzo Casadio Vannucci
Editor
Matteo Faccenda
Production Design
Alexis Álvarez Armas
Director
Tommaso Santambrogio
Tommaso Santambrogio is a young Italian director; he has lived between Milan, Paris, Rome, Florence, and Havana, and has collaborated with several internationally renowned filmmakers, such as Werner Herzog and Lav Diaz. His first short films (Escena Final and Los Océanos Son Los Verdaderos Continentes) were both screened in 2019 at the Venice Film Festival and were then selected in many festivals around the world. Taxibol (2023), his new docu-film, recently premiered at Visions du Réel. Oceans Are the Real Continents is his first feature film and premiered at the Venice Film Festival.
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
One of only a handful of live action children's films to capture the imaginations of generations, E.T. has a luminous warmth; it's a suburban symphony of emotion, and it's fascinating to revisit it in the light of The Fabelmans.
Turner & Constable
Filmed as a supplement to a blockbuster exhibition at Tate Britain happening right now, this doc in the popular Exhibition on Screen series allows us to view these competitive, complementary English landscape artists side by side.
The President's Cake
Nine year old Lamia and her friend Saeed venture into the city to scrounge ingredients for a cake to celebrate Sadaam Hussein's birthday — a quest fraught with real peril in precarious times. Winner, Camera d'Or, Cannes.
Montreal, ma belle
In this Valentine to discovering love later in life, the ever-elegant Joan Chen plays Feng Xia, a 53-year-old Chinese immigrant and mother in Montreal whose world is turned upside down when she meets and falls in love with a young Quebecoise.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly + Talkback with Special Guests
The third and the best of the so-called 'Dollars' trilogy amplifies Leone's baroque style: crane shots, shock cuts and Morricone music all vying for attention as three rogues hunt buried gold in a series of triangular variations. + Intro and Talkback