Open Roads: New Italian Cinema At Lincoln Center 2024

[Chris Knipp]

STILL FROM OCEANS ARE THE REAL CONTINENTS

TOMMASO SANTAMBROGIO: OCEANS ARE THE REAL CONTINENTS/GLI OCEANI SONO I VERI CONTINENTI (2023)

TRAILER

Filmed on location in Spanish with first-time actors by Italian directr Tommaso Santmbrogio, it was reviewed at Venice by Joran Mintzer for Hollywood Reporter.

The plot can been summarized as three stories: Her husband having died in the Angolan Civil War back in the late 1980s, Milagros survives selling peanut cones on the street and spends her days listening to the radio and reading old letters. Frank and Alain nine-year-old best friends go to school and dream of emigrating to the U.S. to become Baseball players (they are on the local little league team), but Frank’s mother is talking about moving to Miami to join the rest of her family, which would oblige Frank to leave his best friend behind. A couple, Edith and Alex, are threatened with separation when Edith can emigrate to Europe for work and Alex is involved in his drama school teaching.

Tommaso Santambrogio’s debut feature is a stunningly photographed black-and-white portrait of contemporary Cuba, capturing three disparate tales of exile with an outsider’s gaze. Each of its constituent stories deals with Cubans planning to leave the country, yearning to leave the country, or affected by someone else’s decision to leave the country, conveying a sense of life in the island nation as always caught between here and there, those who are gone and those who remain. Strikingly and precisely lensed by Lorenzo Casadio Vannucci and performed by a remarkable cast of non-professional actors, Oceans Are the Real Continents is a disarmingly beautiful and moving film about the complex realities of life in Cuba today.

Oceans Are the Real Continents/Los océanos son los verdaderos continentes, 119 mins., a Film Movement release, opened in the Venice Days sidebar Sept. 2023. Released theatrically in Italy Apr. 8, 2024. It was shown recently at Miami. Screened for this review as part of the Open Roads: New Italian Cinema series at Lincoln Center (May 30-Jun. 6, 2024). Showtimes at the Walter Reade Theater:
Sunday, June 2 at 4:00pm – Q&A with Tommaso Santambrogio