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Balseros (Spanish: Rafters) is a 2002 Catalan documentary co-directed by Carles Bosch and Josep Maria Domènech about Cubans leaving during the Período Especial. As a consequence of the widespread poverty that came with the end of economic support from the former USSR, 37,191 Cubans left Cuba in 1994, unimpeded by the Cuban government, using anything they could find or build to get to Florida in the USA. Most left with improvised rafts, which were often not seaworthy, and some even hijacked a ferry. The documentary consists largely of interviews with the rafters ("Balseros"), over the course of seven years the lives of seven of those refugees, from the building of their rafts to their attempts at building new lives in the United States, giving insight into daily life in Cuba and the USA in those days. The documentary is 2 hours long. The first half is filmed in Cuba, with in the end some scenes of the rafters' months long detention in Guantanamo Bay, where lotteries were used to decide who would be allowed to go to the US. All the while, their families didn't know their whereabouts. The last hour is about the lives of those who managed to get to the USA. These people were filmed again five years later, showing their difficulties adapting to a new type of society and the resulting homesickness, a "human adventure of people who are shipwrecked between two worlds".
Original Release
04/12/2002
US Release
04/12/2002
Links
Cast
Name | Character |
---|
Guillermo Armas | Himself / Self |
Maria Celeste Arraras | Herself (archive footage) / Self |
Rafael Cano | Self |
Fidel Castro | Himself (archive footage) / Self |
Bill Clinton | Himself (archive footage) / Self |
Oscar Del Valle | Self |
Mericys Gonzalez | Self |
Misclaida Gonzalez | Self |
Miriam Hernández | Self |
Juan Carlos Subiza | Self |
Directors
Carles Bosch, Josep Maria Domènech
Writers
Cast
Name | Character |
---|
Guillermo Armas | Himself / Self |
Maria Celeste Arraras | Herself (archive footage) / Self |
Rafael Cano | Self |
Fidel Castro | Himself (archive footage) / Self |
Bill Clinton | Himself (archive footage) / Self |
Oscar Del Valle | Self |
Mericys Gonzalez | Self |
Misclaida Gonzalez | Self |
Miriam Hernández | Self |
Juan Carlos Subiza | Self |
Producers
Name | Role |
---|
Tom Roca | Executive Producer |
María José Solera | Executive Producer |
Roca Tom | Executive Producer |
Loris Omedes | Producer |
Danielle Schleif | Producer |
Year | Type | Category | Won |
---|
2004 | Oscar | Best Documentary, Features | Nominated |