Return to Ithaca

A rooftop in Havana, late afternoon. Five friends gather. Amadeo has come back after sixteen years in Spain, and this is the first time they are all together. The rum is opened and the talking starts. First the old days, then what became of whom, then who did what to whom. Why Amadeo left, and what he failed to account for in coming back, arrives at the table slowly. They talk until dawn, and the more they talk the wider the distance grows between those who stayed and the one who went. Laurent Cantet directs; ninety-five minutes, co-written with the Cuban novelist Leonardo Padura, with Jorge Perugorría in the cast. It won the Venice Days award at Venice in 2014. That December it was pulled from the Havana Film Festival on instructions from the culture ministry, and Cuban filmmakers objected publicly.