Director Patricia Ramos sets this film, her second feature and also written by her, in 2016 Havana. It was a time when Cuba featured regularly in the international media with Obama’s visit, a Chanel fashion show and the historic Rolling Stones concert. This film is not about that historical concert, rather that moment. Middle-aged Rita navigates troublesome relationships with her teenage son who wants to leave Cuba, her aging mother, her married lover, and her lifelong friend who is ill. On the eve of the concert, Rita takes decisions that begin to give her some independence, as she hopes that something interesting is about to happen. Described in the Cuban press as “a film that seems simple, but in the end is also a treatise on what has gone and what has been lost, about the unbreakable will to cling to certain values, on the part of people who stay in their place, who are not going anywhere, animated by the crazy idea that they may find, very close to their home, what they have always been looking for.”

This screening will include a short introduction to the film by Adrian Perry of the Cuba Solidarity Campaign.

50% of the profits from this screening will be donated to Medical Aid for Cuba.

Screen Cuba: Screen Cuba celebrates Cuban cinema, looking at the achievements and challenges of the Cuban people through the decolonising lenses of their filmmakers since the 1959 Revolution, and presents films rarely screened in the UK.

Screen Cuba is a collaboration between the Music Fund for Cuba charity, the Cuba Solidarity Campaign, the Cuban Embassy UK and the Cuban film institute ICAIC in Havana.