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
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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
La Belle at the Movies + Apostles of Cinema
Cecilia Zoppelletto's lyrical documentary examines the fate of cinephilia in Kinshasa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo's capital city, currently without a single operating cinema. + Apostles of Cinema (Tanzania, 17 min)
Train Dreams
A lovely, ruminative movie set in the Pacific Northwest in the first half of the last century. Robert (Joel Edgerton) is a lumberjack, a taciturn man who comes to appreciate the life slipping between his fingers.
Left-Handed Girl
Co-written and edited by Sean Baker (Anora), Shi-Ching Tsou's heartwarming solo feature debut follows a single mom in Taipei who is too consumed with her noodle stand to keep tabs on her five-year-old daughter's burgeoning shoplifting habit.
The Colour of Pomegranates + The House Is Black
This month's Pantheon screening is a double-bill, Sergei Parajanov's extraordinary evocation of the life and work of C18th Armenian poet Sayat Nova, and, The House is Black (22 min), the only film directed by the great Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad.
Köln 75
The true story behind the greatest solo concert in jazz history, this is Keith Jarrett's legendary 1975 Köln Concert — as organized by 18-year-old rebel music promoter Vera Brandes. Fun, inventive and feminist, it's the Bend It Like Beckham of jazz films.