| 13/03/2021 – 07:03 (GMT-4)
The movie PLANTING, by Cuban director Lilo Vilaplana, had its official premiere on Friday in Havana and Miami as part of the activities of the Film Festival in that South Florida city.
“Culture and the country are winning,” said former political prisoner Ángel Santiesteban, one of the film’s screenwriters in the Cuban capital, after a group of activists staged the premiere.
Santiesteban recalled that, thanks to the producers’ authorization, the audiovisual material could be broadcast throughout Cuba and thus “break censorship”.
“I think this film will help open the eyes, raise awareness, think. I think it is a lesson for the robbers themselves, who must see themselves in this mirror and refuse the repression of citizens who want freedom for Cuba,” he added. the Santiesteban.
In turn, the film’s director, Vilaplana, mentioned the channel Telemundo 51 that, thanks to the support of Cuban opponents and activists from different parts of the national geography, it would be possible to enjoy material that recounts the experiences of several Cuban political prisoners who decided to “stand up” and deny the forced labor regime. part of a re-education plan.
Some of the protagonists of those events, from which the film was inspired, were invited to the premiere in Miami and highlighted the importance of such an audiovisual work.
“I have been waiting for this for a long time because of the sacrifice I made the political prisoners in Cuba and for the whole world to know what I went through,” said one of the guests at the premiere.
For their part, some of the young actors who brought the characters from Plantados to life mentioned that this type of work can help tell a part of the story that was “misreported” on the island.
The Miami Film Festival takes place on March 5, Contest in which the audiovisual material was released, which will be screened in cinemas in the United States starting on the 26th.
In statements to CiberCuba, director Lilo Vilaplana He said that this project does not come from now, but goes back a quarter of a century ago with several former prisoners and the Cuban businessman Leopoldo Fernández Pujals, the grandson of José Pujals Mederos, who served 27 years in political prison.
“They made many attempts to tell a film about their experience as planted prisoners,” Vilaplana confessed. “The scenario could not remain anecdotal, we had to update the conflict, so the story that Plantados tells begins today in Miami, a former political prisoner accidentally admits one of the officers who tortured him in prison, decides to It is followed by a stormy debate between revenge and justice, while in retrospect we learn about the events that marked the political prison, focusing on the history of those planted in the Cuban political prison. “
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