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Balseros (2002)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted: 24
Fresh: 22
Rotten:2
Average Rating: 7.7/10
Theatrical Release:Jul 23, 2003 Limited
Synopsis:
In the summer of 1994, a team of public television reporters filmed and interviewed seven Cubans, and their families, beginning a few days before their risky venture of setting out to sea in...
In the summer of 1994, a team of public television reporters filmed and interviewed seven Cubans, and their families, beginning a few days before their risky venture of setting out to sea in homemade rafts to reach the coast of the United States.
One of the balseros (rafters) was on a raft that was not seaworthy and had to return to Havana. The others made it far enough to be picked up at sea by the U.S. Coast Guard and taken to the North American naval base at Guantanamo, where the film crew caught up with them, and recorded their many months of confinement. Their families in Cuba had no news of them.
When the balseros were finally allowed to go to the United States, the film crew went with them to a string of cities that included Miami; the Bronx; York, Pennsylvania; Grand Isle, Nebraska; Albuquerque, New Mexico; and a host of other places to which the lives of these immigrants carried them. Seven years later, the film crew visits them again, to discover what their destiny has been in the United States. Theirs is a true story about some of the authentic survivors of our times, the human adventure of people who are shipwrecked between two worlds. -- © Bausan Films
Director: Carles Bosch, Josep M. Domenech
Director: Carles Bosch, Josep M. Domenech
Screenwriter: David Trueba, Carles Bosch
Producer: Loris Omedes
Composer: Lucrecia
Studio: Seventh Art Releasing
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Reviews for Balseros
Here are a handful of fairly ordinary people who happen to be from a crippled island with a deteriorating economy, who earn our sympathy just by being themselves.
Focuses its attention on telling a series of individual, human stories, refreshingly leaving the history lessons for the classroom.
A movie that shows normal life can be as tough, and as gripping, as rowing across a dangerous ocean.
Relates such amazing journeys that it's hard not to get emotionally involved.
A heart-rending account of people trying to dodge the hurdles that politics puts in front of them.
A seven-year time lapse that's full of drama, poignancy and some heartbreaking moments.
Hangs on to a sense of hope and promise, even in the face of disaster, that can only come from the people themselves.
The documentary is remarkable in how it personalized this human tragedy.
Despite its unique Cuban elements, Balseros gets much of its power from the way it turns out to be a classic story of immigrants coming to a golden land and finding the streets paved with baser materials.
Old news for anyone who has seen even one or two documentaries on similar subject matter.
While uneven, occasionally confusing and rough-edged, the documentary achieves a rare depth and intimacy in its portrait of dreams fulfilled and shattered.
Once viewers get to know the balseros as individuals, rather than by a label thrust upon them by desperate circumstances, it's interesting to see how close to -- or far from -- their dreams the American experience takes them.
Hats off to directors Carles Bosch and Josep M. Domench for creating this documentary about a complex and important subject.
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