Molina's Borealis

Three stories about men and women in terminal situations.

A possessed patient unleashes chaos in a hospital in Cuba.

Lorenzo, a Cuban policeman specializing in grave robberies is sent to Havana to investigate the death of a Havana-born German national, Hermann (or German in Spanish) found in a famous grave. Lorenzo recounts his findings to the police chief (Major Anancio) as he investigates Dora, an elevator operator and Herrmann's landlady, Aguila and Silvia (who work for Cultural Affairs), Chrissy (a British-born Socialist Internationalist lover), Xiomara (Hermann's mother and a local drag queen as well), a dwarf, and a false Guatemalan who had raped Chrissy during her internationalist "love/sex campaign" in Guatemala. These are the main, but not the only characters, one must absolutely follow to make sense of the plot.

A cleaning employee discovers that he's the only survivor of a catastrophe in the Soviet Union in the near future.

An intellectual leaves the Cuban revolution and 'underdevelopment' behind only to find himself at odds with the ambiguities of his new life in the 'developed' world. A portrait of alienation, of an outsider with no clear-cut politics or ideology. A stranger in a strange land struggling with old age, sexual desire and ultimately the impossibility for the individual to belong in any society. The film's narrative is a collage of flashbacks, daydreams, and hallucinations comprising live-action, animation, and newsreel footage assembled to suggest the way personal memory works, subjectively and emotionally.

Walfrido Larduet, a lonely electrical inspector, dreams of the Red Woman, whose image persists and becomes an obsession. Something tells him she is near. Over the course of a day, Walfrido will follow her trail as he travels through the suburbs of an infested city.

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.

While Havana is full of zombies hungry for human flesh, official media reported that the disturbances are caused by dissidents paid by the United States. Panic seizes all until Juan comes to the rescue: he discovers he can kill the undead destroying his brain, and decides to start a small business under the slogan "We kill your loved ones."

At the height of the 1980s AIDS epidemic, Cuban boxing champion Horacio's punishment for failing a drug test is to watch over the brash, combative Daniel, a patient in a sanatorium where HIV patients are compulsorily confined. The two collide as Daniel yearns for freedom while Horacio dreams of returning to the ring.

A choral story where characters of different statuses and generations cross paths in an attempt to find happiness and alleviate the loneliness that crushes some of them. In a 12-storey building, neighbors and newcomers intersect, and in these encounters the destiny of some will be twisted and that of others will take better paths. A few blocks away, in another building, two septuagenarians struggle to get the company of a couple who are in a fight against the clock for a few square meters.

Three characters in present-day Havana must choose between clinging to their self-restricting beliefs, or getting rid of them to live more freely. Ballerina Mariana has promised God celibacy if she gets the role of "Giselle"; Social-worker Julia always faints after hearing a certain word; and pot-smoking percussionist Elpidio was abandoned by his mother, coincidentally named Cuba, some time ago and has not yet gotten over the loss.

Aram is a wearied accountant with an unbearably dull existence. With a nagging wife who berates him for not being assertive enough, and a measly paycheck, he quietly suffers while awaiting a long-deserved promotion. But there's more to Aram than his mild-mannered demeanor lets on: he has been secretly devising a scheme to finally get what he feels he is owed. One day he asserts his power menacingly when he kidnaps a schoolgirl and keeps her tied up in an abandoned warehouse. What seems like the perfect plan soon unravels into his worst nightmare, and his carefully constructed scheme comes crashing down piece by bloody piece.

A young, attractive widow is protected from her vicious mother-in-law, by a male relative who practices Satanism, and lusts after the old woman's sexy adolescent granddaughter.

In a town plagued by the murders of the "Killer of the Seven Leathers", a prostitute helps a religious young man when he's attacked by hoodlums. He takes her to his ragged shack filled with Catholic objects, where she tries to seduce him.

East of the largest island of the Antilles, Cuba, in the city of Gibara Raúl, an actor who has been invited to the film festival sees a beautiful young woman who comes out of the sea with a yellow dress and seaweed on her head in one morning. This happens while walking in a wind farm on his trip to the city.

Unites 8 Latin American filmmakers from countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Spain, and Mexico in a single feature to count depict in seven stories some of the most brutal crimes that have happened in these countries.