Fernando Pérez Wins Best Film Award at Havana Film Festival in New York

November 12, 2022

The feature film Tales of One More Day, by a collective of independent Cuban filmmakers, won the coveted Best Film award on Thursday at the Havana Film Festival in New York.

The production, coordinated by director Fernando Pérez, presents six stories about Cuban society during the pandemic and competed with 24 films for the Havana Star Award. This is the first co-production between the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (Icaic) and independent creative collectives.

"It poetically portrays the bloodiest chapter of contemporary health history," the jury communicated, according to an Efe news dispatch. The film is made up of the stories: "The Braid" (Direction: Rosa María Rodríguez); "The Bird Girl" (Alán González); "Mercuria" (Carolina Fernández Vega-Charadán); "Him and Her" (Yoel Infante); "The Days" (Katherine T. Gavilán, Sheyla Pool) and "Rooster" (Eduardo Eimil).

Pérez, director and writer, who was not present at the awards ceremony, sent a video message in which he thanked each of the six directors who did the work "under very, very limited conditions but with a lot of heart." He also expressed satisfaction because a year after the film was made "we can now go to the movies to see films like this."

The Havana Star Award for Best Director went to Diego Lerman for The Substitute (Argentina). The story revolves around a teacher in Buenos Aires who must abandon his duties when one of his students is threatened by a local crime boss.

The Best Actor and Best Actress awards went to Roberto Quijano for Love and Mathematics (Mexico) and to Barbara Colen for Fogareu (Brazil). Quijano, from Mexico, assured that the festival "was a great experience," as well as receiving his first award.

In Love and Mathematics, directed by Claudia Sainte-Luce, Quijano plays a musician who, after a moment of glory with a song, has abandoned his passion to be with his wife and baby.

As Best Documentary, Alis was awarded, by Clare Weiskopf and Nicolas Van Hemelrick (Colombia) and the Special Jury Mention in that category went to Squatters/Okupas by Catalina Santamaría, a co-production of the United States and Colombia.

Dominican director Natalia Cabral and Spaniard Oriol Estrada took the Best Screenplay award for A Film About Couples (Dominican Republic).

The 22nd edition of the Havana Film Festival, which presented more than thirty films from ten Latin American countries and from Latinos in the United States, concluded on Thursday with the awards ceremony at a cinema in Manhattan and the world premiere of the documentary Havana by Fito by Juan Pin Vilar, a co-production of Cuba and Argentina about the singer-songwriter's memories of his relationship with Havana.

The director was not present, but the well-known Cuban film critic Frank Padrón presented the documentary and highlighted that Pin Vilar has "special sensitivity for approaching musicians." He recalled that in addition to various works for television, he made a documentary about singer-songwriter Pablo Milanés.