Marilyn Solaya

It's an open wound. With Estrés, Marilyn Solaya doesn't seek to tell stories: she exposes them, shakes them up, leaves them unanesthetized. In six intertwined stories, the director turns everyday life into an emotional battlefield, where poverty, love, illness, and dignity clash relentlessly.

In 1979 Cuba, flamboyant gay artist Diego attempts to seduce straitlaced David, an idealistic young communist, and fails dismally. But David conspires to be "friends" with Diego so he can monitor the artist's subversive life for the state. As Diego and David discuss politics, individuality and personal expression in Castro's Cuba, a genuine friendship develops between the two.

Ernesto is a journalist in his 40's who comes from a generation which encountered much political persecution and exile; between the memories and unhealed wounds of his past, stands Ernesto. When his good friend Ricardo calls him one day and proposes to get together after 25 years, they decide to gather all the members of the “old gang” in order to revive those old feelings the best way they know how, through some good old rock n' roll. Amongst one of Ernesto's encounters is Ana, an old love who will bring a twisting unexpected turn into his life. The old gang is comprised of Ricardo's depressive, hypochondriac wife Ana and her socially-conscious former lover Ernesto, a journalist who left Ana years ago to pursue his political ideologies in socialist Cuba.

In 90's Habana, a nurse and a home builder, hopelessly in love, live happily married. A circumstantial fact of her past life will put their feelings to test and undermine the most elemental principles.