Duel

A masterclass in mood, the film plunges us into the darkness of the blackouts that ripple across Cuba. In the murk of shadow, the flickering of fire beckons stories from realms beyond the reach of light. Electricity cuts have revived a protest movement dormant since the revolution, one demanding that power be restored.

We are roaming around a futuristic, geometric construction whose structure emerges in a milky white. But a matter eroded by time is what now appears, lit up by torchlight, like the remains of a lost civilisation that these men dressed in yellow suits are collecting, beneath the gaze of a child concealed behind the vegetation. It is down to the “citrus tristeza virus”— a disease leading to the decline of trees — which struck the families living in this region of Cuba, who survive, now, in the virtual ruins of a former agronomy school inhabited by “New Men” familiar with the latest orange-growing techniques.

Obsessed by the end of the world, Ernesto has spent years designing an island where humans will go to live should everything disappear. Following a particular method of research, the Cuban scientist shows us his prototype for a perfect universe, the “Metatron”, a sort of strange figure that articulates the circle and the cube, these perfect forms that exist in nature and should save us during a potential doomsday scenario.

Olga and Enrique live alone in the house they have shared since their wedding, 60 years ago. Faced with the uncertainty of the present, his life has been reduced to waiting and evoking the past.

The city dissolves itself in the same way it was created. With each movement, its inhabitants are preparing to leave to another place, while forming the newton image.

Raudel has been haunted since childhood by the sight of a strange light. Now, at the age of 27, he dedicates himself to scrapping ships in Bahia Honda, Cuba, a place where the line that separates the living from the dead is almost invisible.

Laboring in a Cuban ship graveyard, an almost apocalyptic world of fire and creaking sheets of steel, Pitufo dreams of a better life. An atmospheric, magical glimpse into a life on society's margins.