FILM SCREENINGS

Ticket to Paradise

Cuba/Spain/Venezuela. 2010. Directed and cowritten by Gerardo Chijona Valdes. With Miriel Cejas, Héctor Medina, Dunia Matos. In 1993, during Cuba's economically depressed "special period," Eunice, a motherless teenager, runs away from home to escape her sexually abusive father. Trying to reach her married sister in a village near the capital, she hitchhikes with a group of homeless teenagers she meets on the road. Inspired by this new camaraderie—and her special bond with the charismatic Aljandro, a young rocker who feels discriminated against by society—Eunice makes their dreams and hopes for freedom part of her struggle for survival. As the damaged teens reach Havana, their search for paradise takes them through the fractured underbelly of Cuban counterculture in the time of AIDS. The filmmaker navigates unexpected narrative turns with finesse, tapping into the very real desperation of young people struggling to forge personal identities in a society with little support to offer. The young actors inhabit their roles with a natural energy and abandon, to great emotional effect.