Jonathan Ali talks with Cuban director Luis Alejandro Yero about the film “Moscow Calls”
Cuban film directors in 2020 Luis Alejandro Yero A few weeks after he was locked down, like the rest of the world, in his Havana apartment because of the pandemic, he read an article in a foreign newspaper about the plight of Cuban refugees stranded in Moscow.
Heartbroken by their plight, Yero spent 18 months researching their situation and meeting some of them online, before flying to Russia to film them. Upon arriving in freezing Moscow, Yero and his team quickly faced another challenge: a possible invasion of Ukraine.
The photo was taken in a specially rented apartment. Call from Moscow In this film, four young, queer Cuban men, like the filmmaker, create a space in which they re-create their lives as undocumented immigrants.
For Dariel, Daryl, Eldiz and Juan Carlos, this means solitude and more time on the phone with relatives in Cuba, but it also means some freedom to express themselves creatively and imagine what the future might look like beyond the precarious present. Jonathan Ali We spoke with Luis Alejandro Yero about his timely and thoughtful film.
The film is incredibly intimate, achieving an incredible intimacy with its subjects.
It was very easy to conspire together, because we had a few things in common. We were close in age, so this camaraderie developed quickly, but also because of our shared origins in Cuba. At the same time, we are all queer. So the idea was above all to create a space to play among the hostility: the -20 Moscow winters, the coronavirus panic, passing Russian police on the street, the alarm over a possible Putin invasion of Ukraine. Filming became a form of resistance, a way to feel vitality amidst the devastation.
You have abandoned having your subjects provide traditional testimony about themselves.
Yes, absolutely. Interviews are something few filmmakers know how to handle in a way that is worthwhile and surprising. In my case, I have always preferred to observe. The subject is aware of the camera, but I believe that careful observation allows you to find contradictions, inconsistencies, or even the deepest revelations. Also, observing someone’s body language allows you to imagine more freely what they are like. This requires more attention and more effort to read and discover someone’s deepest truths.
Not only can you be heard on the phone with your subjects, but you’re also in the film – why did you have to step in front of the camera?
I’ve always been very shy in front of the camera, mainly because I don’t have much to say or show about myself. Call from Moscow,create Device Creating a fake house gave me the need to make myself a character in the story. It would be a fraud if I were to hide that the house does not belong to the protagonist. The place is something we have created. Even if the film is borderline genre, I have always been clear that I start with a documentary gesture, and that is the case here.
At the end of the film, one of the subjects returns home to Cuba, but it’s suggested that his fate is unknown. Were you able to get in touch with him eventually? Do you remain in contact with the others?
Unfortunately, to this day I have not been able to get in touch with Daryl. I am in regular contact with the others. Eldis returned to Cuba a few months after the shooting. Dariel and Juan Carlos are still in Russia. Their situation certainly has not improved much. Informal jobs come and go and they live on minimal guarantees. They are still young, in their twenties, and for now they deal with the tough situation of illegal immigration with vigor. They always tell me that they prefer the tough life in Moscow to the boredom and decay of Cuba. Of course, there is nothing ideal about this situation.
Call from Moscow (2023)
Directed by: Luis Alejandro Yero
Cuba
66th minute
