31/08/2023 - VENICE 2023: Having opened the competition at the 20th Giornate degli Autori, Tommaso Santambrogio’s debut feature film is a poetic reflection on the theme of separation

There are certain images which we’re exposed to as children which remain imprinted in our memories forever. Sometimes, one of these images gives rise to a film. This was the case for Tommaso Santambrogio, who witnessed a heart-wrenching embrace between a father and daughter when he was eight years old, in an airport in Cuba (the young woman was probably taking a one-way flight), which has inspired his beautiful debut feature film Oceans Are The Real Continents [+see also:
trailer
interview: Tommaso Santambrogio
film profile], which opened the competition of the 20th Giornate degli Autori within the 80th Venice Film Festival.

A longer version of the homonymous short film, which won an award at Venice’s International Critics’ Week in 2019 and was subsequently screened in a variety of international festivals, this movie by the promising 31-year-old director - who has lived in Italy and Havana, and who already has significant collaborations under his belt with authors along the lines of Lav Diaz and Werner Herzog - is a poetic reflection on the theme of separation. Its elegant black and white images form the backdrop to three stories which all relate, in one way of another, to a modern-day scourge in Cuban society: the migration crisis.

In the past 18 months alone, almost 8 percent of Cubans have left their island in search of a better life. And that’s precisely what skilled puppeteer Edith (Edith Ybarra Clara) is getting ready to do in the film. She and her partner Alex (Alexander Diego) are both thirty-year-old theatre actors who are widely followed by the inhabitants of San Antonio De Los Baños (the film actually opens with one of their performances). Edith is waiting on documents before leaving for Europe, while Alex is determined to stay. Meanwhile, little Franck (Frank Ernesto Lam) and Alain (Alain Alfonso González) - who are being force-fed the idea that “freedom is the essence of life” at school - dream of emigrating to the USA and becoming baseball stars. For her part, elderly Milagros (Milagros Llanes Martinez) represents the historic memory of the region: she dusts old photos, listens to traditional music and re-reads old letters from her husband sent from Angola, where the Cubans were fighting against the South African invasion, supported by the USA. Her husband never returned from Africa, but Milagros still goes to the station every day, as if hoping to see him stepping off a train.

During the film’s two-hour run-time, Santambrogio follows his characters (all local actors) in the interactions and everyday acts of their daily lives, often using long shots and a static camera, and composing sophisticated tableaux full of nostalgia, in a black and white which gets straight to the heart of things. Emotions rise slowly but surely, and a puppet show which also speaks of distant loved ones (a father who’s moving away from his son) carries the film to a lyrical climax, revealing the sensitivity of this new director whose future work we look forward to following.

Oceans Are The Real Continents is produced by Rosamont together with RAI Cinema, in co-production with Cacha Films (Cuba). International sales fall to Fandango Sales.

(Translated from Italian)

Photogallery 30/08/2023: Venice 2023 - Oceans Are the Real Continents

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Tommaso Santambrogio, Alexander Diego, Edith Ybarra Clara, Gianluca Arcopinto, Marica Stocchi
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