When Fabien Pisani listened to his film In the Heat: Stories of a Local Warrior He did not show up on Multicine Infanta, at the scheduled time on New Year’s afternoon, he reacted as expected. “If the light comes, we project it. If we don’t, we put it on,” explains the cinema employee, standing in the doorway. And the light is not there. The power outage disappeared almost everywhere in Havana in the most painful darkness — which lasted several days — and there was frustration, among other experiences of the daily life of Cubans, the screening of Pisani’s first documentary film, as part of the official selection of the 46th International Festival of New Latin American Cinema, celebrated on December 4 and 14.
“Let’s have some beer,” invited the director to join him, among half a hundred people who waited for an hour at the door of the busy Infanta Avenue, in Centro Habana, to see the film that tells the story of Rubén Cuesta Palomo. Good man, and depicts the circumstances in which the island’s reguetón took place, a genre from which Cubans profit and which has suffered from cataracts for years. While supporting the codo in the bar of a local tavern, in the middle of the darkness, Pisani ruminated with his friends, Lucía was serene and did not want to give rise to conspiracy theories about himself, he would see his documentary in Havana.
But the process takes place within. The director had suffered the refusal of another documentary festival in Switzerland, Living: the relentless time of Pablo Milanéswhich shows one of the central figures of Cuban music and the history of the island of the last half century. For this purpose, the next day, the second passage of In the heathad been canceled without notice and never appeared on the official card. In its place, the name of another film appeared. Power cuts and constant changes in the programming of the most important cinematographic event on the island have marked this edition, perhaps like never before, despite the fact that the authorities had announced the installation of electrical installations in each cinema.
Hours passed and the organizers contacted the director of In the heat -Gabo Award 2025 in the Imagen category- that the first screening, in the Infanta, is postponed to December 10. Between the fear of another power outage and the intense rain of the afternoon, spectators arrived as best they could at the cinema to see a documentary which is the story of a man, but also of a generation which changed the way of being, of being and of thinking across the region. “If my music was wrong, then the village was also the same”, is one of the pithy sentences heard saying to Candyman, a man who has become the myth of the sovereign, who tells in this film his story, his confrontation with power and the institutional rejection which attacked his music and which keeps him as a marginalized artist. Despite this, since Santiago de Cuba, Candyman and others have consolidated alternative forms of diffusion, distribution and promotion of their art, gradually transforming it into a mass phenomenon.
Lázaro Díaz, a young man of 28 years old, who was first a rapper and now a singer of distribution – a Cuban evolution of the region – and if he calls The dealerenthusiastic sale of the screening of At the Caliente. Make sure Candyman’s story motivates any young artist. “Regueton is the expression of a reality and it is impossible to eliminate it. Censorship only means that reguetoneros are looking for alternative ways to produce and disseminate their music, without needing government support. And even more prohibiting, even more prohibiting that people express themselves, we will have more strength and the more our work will be seen”, he reflects.
Cuban cinema at the Norwegian Embassy in Havana
The other Pisani belt model, Living: the relentless time of Pablo Milanés if you have to leave the official festival circuit, in Cinema under the stars of the Norwegian Embassy in Cuba, a space that has become essential for Cubans to watch independent Cuban films to which the administration has censored or limited access in some cinemas screened in Havana.
“Fabien: this is the audience that could come today,” Cuban actor Luis Alberto García said to the director, in front of almost 200 people gathered to watch the documentary that shows Pablo in his last years, reflecting on different moments of his life and his creation, as well as interviews with other generational companions and his family. Pisani, created by Pablo Milanés since the age of ten and always recognized by the singer-songwriter as a young man, paints a portrait of the character based on family intimacy.
“It’s a necessary documentary at the moment,” comments Camila Guevara Milanés, singer and director of the emblematic Cuban author. “I really enjoyed watching it in the cinema with my friends and it delights me that Fabien approached the film from a unique place, because he was his son. He addresses very well the person who was Pablo, how he experienced his love, his relationships, his family, his work, his transitions, his illnesses. It’s important to have this type of cinema and proposals in our lives, of cultural relevance, with a diversity of ideas”, he emphasizes.
A diptych to tell a cultural story
The day after the screening, Fabien speaks with EL PAÍS while sitting in a café on Avenida 23, where most of the cinemas where the festival takes place are located. The creator has a large space in Cuba where he wants to access with his works, with which he tries to establish a conversation with Cubans.
“The films, despite the differences between the characters, are crossed by their own desire to tell a cultural story,” he assures. Pisani see you soon Live a more personal, more intimate dialogue, “a dialogue with the generation of my priests,” he said. In the heatHowever, “it depicts a moment of detachment, in relation to the cataclysm of the 90s, of a generation which saw how the system and institutions wanted to represent, reflect and dialogue with reality”.
For the creator, it was a surprise that, among them, the festival chose In the heat. “I think I tend to have intelligence and vision to not repeat the mistakes I made, but I fall back on the same agenda and against the same character,” reflects Fabien, while showing his gratitude for having screened his films in Havana, “regardless of the specific conditions in which they were made.”
“Now I feel that the 15 years of work devoted to the two films were worth it,” he assures. Although I recognize the difficulty of Livean authentic declaration of love to his priest. “I didn’t want to finish this film. It was painful, but at the same time it gave me time to realize the privilege of having this open dialogue with him.”
Fabien is now pursuing other opportunities inside and outside the island. Are you determined to conceive In the heat in Santiago de Cuba, where the origin of the story is located, and also plans to present it at the Gibara International Film Festival. The international tour of the two materials continues and hopes to be successful Live Mexico – where he resides – and Spain, an important country in the history of Pablo Milanés, where he lived his last years.
“These are not reactionary documentaries, they are readings of our own history,” explains the Cuban director, who considers Candyman to be an urban type, anarchopunkrebel, embodying a completely different idea than what Pablo represents, the idea of the criollo man which has more to do with the political process of the Cuban Revolution. “Candyman is the denial of everything, the failure of all: it is a consequence. It is a mistake – it has always been the case – to hold popular music responsible for things that do not work in this country. In any case, they are the symptom of these problems”, he explains.
I spent 15 years making these documentaries and a multifaceted career between music, cinema, events and poetry, for Pisani, Cuba is an obsession that we cannot part with. “I want to try to understand this nonsense.”
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