Behavior

Chala is eleven and lives on the edge of Havana. His mother is an addict, he supports the household, and he raises fighting dogs. The one person he is attached to at school is Carmela, his sixth-grade teacher. When an accident keeps her away, the arrangement that replaces her wants Chala sent to a correctional institution. Carmela objects, and the matter stops being about one boy's future and becomes a conflict between an institution and a person. Ernesto Daranas criticises Cuba's education system from inside it, without rejecting the system outright. Carmela belongs to that institution and conducts her resistance from within it. The telling is realist, the locations are real, and the child performers are not professionals. Armando Valdés Freyre plays Chala and Alina Rodríguez plays Carmela. Who it's for: Viewers who like Cuban cinema, teacher and student stories, and social realism. Who it's not for: The emotional steering is pronounced and the ending ties up too neatly. The scenes of child poverty and violence are also heavy.