# Cuban filmmakers win the award for 'Best Documentary Direction' at the Málaga Festival

**Date:** 09/01/2020

The Cuban feature-length documentary A media voz, directed by Cuban filmmakers Patricia Pérez and Heidi Hassan, won the Silver Biznaga for Best Director in the Documentary section this Saturday during the awards ceremony of the 23rd edition of the Málaga Film Festival.

It is an autoethnographic documentary that revolves around the visual correspondence exchanged by the two Cuban filmmakers and migrants, friends since childhood, who dialogue about their experiences outside the Island and the new paths their lives are taking in Europe.

The film was co-produced between Spain, France, Cuba and Switzerland, and directed by Pérez and Hassan, graduates of the International School of Film and Television of San Antonio de los Baños (EICTV), currently residing in Spain.

Previously they obtained the Best Feature Film Award at the 32nd edition of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), Holland, one of the most prestigious in the genre in the world, as well as the Coral award for Best Documentary Feature Film awarded by the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema of La Habana.

"It works well as an agile, difficult to classify and essayistic look at the creative process of a group of sensitive and intelligent women of the 21st century," wrote about the work critic Neil Young for The Hollywood Reporter, while Davide Abbatescianni described it as "an emotional story of friendship, affection, homesickness and love for cinema."

In Variety, Guy Lodge wrote that "it is not just a story about immigrant alienation, it also addresses intimate and personal distance (...) The epistolary format (...) works perfectly," while Nikki Baughan stated that "the directors skillfully present the journey of their lives, both together and apart, without losing the strength of their individual voices" in Screendaily.

The documentary will be shown soon at festivals in Peru, Greece, Israel and France, and will premiere in Spanish cinemas at the end of this year.

Heidi Hassan recently commented that she is waiting for the pandemic to diminish in Cuba to show it in the country's theaters.

"No longer as co-director, but as a viewer in need of other narratives, I recommend it, because I think it proposes something fresh in the exhausted and exhausting visuality of our country and because it explores the female gaze so absent from our screens," Hassan stated.

Patricia Pérez also commented that, with the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic, the film's festival circuit, which is just resuming, was halted for several months.

"Covid-19 interrupted the entire festival circuit we had confirmed. In March and April the film was going to be in more than ten festivals: Miami, Cartagena de Indias, Málaga, San José de Costa Rica, Guadalajara Mexico, Zagreb, Panama, Toulouse, Tiblisi, Mallorca, Tui, Palmas de Canarias... In May and June they had already confirmed for us Nyon, Doc Barcelona, Documenta Madrid, Sheffield, Barbican in London," she revealed.

"It was even going to premiere in April in the cinemas of La Habana, which as you can imagine had a very special meaning for us. I had even organized everything to be there at that moment. And suddenly, when I was in Miami, all the festivals started falling like flies, canceling or postponing. What followed was silence, uncertainty. We don't know what's going to happen, nobody knows. Some festivals went online and we (Heidi and I, the producer and the sales agent) decided not to present the film online," she added.

The Málaga Festival, founded in 1998, is one of the important film festivals in Spain, where the most relevant premieres of the year of Spanish cinema are presented, including documentaries and short films. In addition, it hosts round tables and talks on current topics for cinema.