Closing Time

Three siblings find themselves in their childhood home. There is one thing the mother must say. These are the days before Christmas. There is also a girl, who finds herself living those days with them. It looks so familiar. There is an expectation and a forced closeness. A new fish for the aquarium and an engagement ring. Old school notebooks and a remote control that is no longer found. A ringing phone and an old story of Red Indian shamans. There are certain spirits in that house who are struggling to leave.

Alex and Edith, a young couple in their 30s, live their relationship made up of small gestures and everyday life among the ruins of Cuban buildings. Milagros, an elderly woman now retired, tries to survive by selling peanuts and spends her days listening to the radio and reading old letters. Frank and Alain, two nine-year-old friends, go to school and dream of emigrating together to the United States to become Major League Baseball players. Against the backdrop of San Antonio De Los Baños, a town in inland Cuba where time seems to stand still, these three narratives and their respective worlds unfold. Over this mosaic of contemporaneity, however, brought to life through the characters' memories, hovers the specter of separation, the true great scourge of Cuban society.

Having Cuba as a background, decadent and in crisis, in a black-and-white lacerated by the Caraibic swinging rain, Alex and Edith, a couple in their 30s, live their love story made of small daily gestures, stories from the past, nostalgia, and a deep intimacy.

Driving around the streets of Cuba, Lav Diaz – the famous Filipino director – and Gustavo Flecha - a talkative Cuban taxi driver – find themselves discussing about politics, migration, social conditions and love; touching many personal stories and experiences, they create an historical affresco of the conditions of their own countries.

The story of an indigenous Ese’eja child facing the death of his grandfather. During the two days that separate the two traditional funerals the child decides to go for the first time to the city, to chase his grandfather dream and set his spirit free.