Susana Alonso

Film director Juan Bravo is in a deep, existential funk: his latest film has been vilified by critics, and his friends, relatives and even business associates are wasting no time in badmouthing him. He seeks refuge in the city of Oviedo, Asturias, wandering the empty streets at night, going to parties that are veritable circuses full of wannabes, and attending concerts and religious and traditional ceremonies as he seeks inspiration for his next film. He reminisces about his childhood but, most importantly, that strange woman who asked him to visit her at her apartment at precisely 10 p.m., not one minute more, nor one minute less.

A band of assailants irrupts into an adult-video production company.

When his father dies, a Cuban man who was raised in the United States, learns that he was not abandoned by his mother but illegally taken out of Cuba. He goes back to the island and is helped in his search by a cousin and a taxi driver.

The 50-minute "Madagascar" has the resonance and eloquence of the best poetry, as it deftly turns an adolescent's search for identity into a metaphor for socialist Cuba. Laura is a professor at a shabby, stultifying college. Her daughter, Laurita, stops going to school, wishes to move to Madagascar and quickly races through several phases. One day, she looks like a heavy-metal fan, another like a bohemian who weeps at poetry and art. Slowly, she crosses the line from ordinary adolescent confusion to intense neurosis and beyond, finally becoming so obsessed with religion and good works that she brings 10 homeless children into the cramped house she shares with her mother and grandmother.