IFF Panama Channel: Ibero-American Jewels

Sergio & Serguéi 

Director: 

Ernesto Daranas 

In the year 1991, the former Soviet Union is disintegrating and Cuba has entered an economic crisis. Sergio, a professor of Marxism and amateur radio operator living in Havana, has no idea how to get on with his life in the midst of these uncertainties. Meanwhile, Serguéi, the last Soviet cosmonaut, is up in space, practically forgotten by the brokendown Mir orbital station. The two men accidentally make contact, giving rise to a friendship that will help them overcome the changes that take place in their respective countries.

This film by Ernesto Daranas (see report on p. 144), starring Tomás Cao, Héctor Noas, and Ron Perlman, premiered at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival. It also won the Audience Award for Best Central American and Caribbean Film at the 2018 Panama International Film Festival.  

Che: Memories of a Secret Year

Director:  Margarita Hernández

Commander Ernesto Guevara mysteriously disappeared from the public eye in 1965, at the height of the Cold War. The Argentine revolutionary adopted a false identity and transformed his face to circumvent surveillance by the CIA and the KGB. He hid out in Tanzania and Prague, waiting for the Cuban intelligence service to prepare his next mission. In this film, the three former secret agents who accompanied him on his travels reveal, for the first time, the details of the operation.  

Director, screenwriter, and producer Margarita Hernández directs this historical documentary. Hernández was born in Cuba and studied cinema in Brazil, where she now resides.  

The Flower of Life

Directors: Claudia Abend and Adriana Loeff 

This Uruguayan documentary uses a universal story to reflect on love and heartbreak, relationships, and the challenges of aging. We enter the lives of Aldo and Gabriella, who are going through a crisis after fifty years of married life. Their personalities, interests, and ways of seeing the world are no longer the same and after their eightieth birthdays they begin to wonder why they are still together. 

This is the second award-winning film codirected by Claudia Abend and Adriana Loeff; their first film Hit was Uruguay’s biggest box office success in 2008, the year it was released.