Having failed a doping test, former boxing champion Horacio is required to serve as a mentor at the Los Cocos sanatorium to Daniel, an unpredictable HIV patient.
The latter however is determined to escape and spend his last days in freedom. Faced by an AIDS epidemic in the eighties, the Cuban government established a sanatorium in Havana's suburbs, intended to operate under military watch. Horacio, a former boxing champion, has fallen from favour due to a doping scandal, as a result of which he is required to serve as an honorary companion to Daniel. He is actually somewhat of a folk hero: he served with the Cuban military in Africa, where he caught the infection from a local prostitute.
Daniel is determined to spend his dying days in freedom, and sees an opportunity on one of the rare trips to the city granted to inmates. Pavel Giroud draws connections between the various taboos of Cuban society; the treatment of AIDS victims in the eighties and internationalist intervention in Angola and Mozambique.
What starts out as a relationship strained by masculine pride, ends up with cutting insight into Cuban society and gender definitions, intensified by the isolated world of the AIDS clinic.
Pavel Giroud - born in Havana, Cuba. His short films quickly gained recognition, and he has since gone on to shoot music videos and commercials. We use cookies on our website. Some of them are essential for the operation of the site, while others help us to improve this site and the user experience tracking cookies. You can decide for yourself whether you want to allow cookies or not. Please note that if you reject them, you may not be able to use all the functionalities of the site. For a correct representation of this web page the execution of JavaScript must be activated.
