Tommaso Santambrogio’s debut feature is a stunningly photographed black-and-white portrait of Cuba. A tryptic of gently intersecting stories, set in San Antonio de los Baños, the film follows the romance of a young artistic couple as their creative passions pull them in different directions, an elderly woman reliving her past through letters from a long lost love, and two street kids who dream of playing for the Yankees. Strikingly lensed by Lorenzo Casadio Vannucci, with a cast of non-professional actors, Oceans Are the Real Continents has the texture and resonance of social realism, with unmistakable echoes of Mikhail Kalatozov’s I Am Cuba, but a wonderful sense of style that is poetic, emotional, and intoxicating. Santambrogio captures the essence of a country that is unstuck in time, haunted by ghosts of past, present, and an uncertain future. Artful and patient, these carefully woven stories portray a people in exile, with deep roots in their homeland but a yearning for all there is to experience outside this isolated island. ~OO

Also screens Saturday, October 26 | 4 PM