Santa y Andrés (Santa & Andres) (2017 Feature Film)

One day, a woman with a chair arrives at Andrés’s tumbledown shack, somewhere on a hill in Eastern Cuba. She has to watch him for three days. A big ‘peace forum’ is being held and with all the foreign press in Cuba, the authorities don’t want homosexual, dissident authors like Andrés walking around.

Santa y Andrés is a painful depiction of how, in the 1980s, the work of homosexual intellectuals and artists was made impossible in Cuba. This is the second film by filmmaker Carlos Lechuga, who is a member of a new generation of independent Cuban filmmakers. Santa & Andrés provides a critical take on the past – which is why it wasn’t screened during the film festival in Havana – yet is primarily a wonderfully acted, personal drama about the slow rapprochement between two polar opposites. A delightful, subtle film about friendship in a society where trust is about as scarce as clothes.