Festivals
The 2023 Berlinale: Calls From Moscow -
Interview with director Luis Alejandro Yero
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Calls from Moscow (Llamadas desde Moscú) is Yero’s debut feature documentary, for which he is also director, scriptwriter and producer. With a running time of 65 minutes it is a Cuban co-production with Germany and Norway, and the film had its world premiere in the Forum section of the 2023 Berlinale. The documentary takes place just days before the invasion of Ukraine becomes a reality. Four young Cubans (Eldis, Dariel, Daryl and Juan Carlos) visit a Moscow apartment for 24 hours. The apartment is so high above the city that the traffic below and passing trains are an eerie distant hum that merge with the wind and the residential building’s ventilation system. That only fades when the four young Cubans speak on their phones and their phones respond: conversations between loved ones, sales consultations, immigrant advice, chats with the director, news reports, lip-synced pop renditions, and calls that are not always picked up. Within these walls and phone calls we hear stories of being queer and an undocumented immigrant, while exchanges with the film’s director underline their distress after the outbreak of the war.
At the Berlinale, Calls from Moscow had four screenings at different venues, including Zoo Palast. For the screening at the Silent Green venue the director was not present so the film was introduced by the producer Daniel Sanchez Lopez and Cinematographer Maria Grazia Goya. Therefore, the interview discussion took place via internet video call between Berlin and the EICTV in Cuba a few weeks after the Berlin Film Festival ended.
Camera Lucida: You studied at the International Film and Television School and I understand that is where you are still based now?
Luis Alejandro Yero: Yes, I am based here most of the year in the Documentary Department. When I am not working abroad I spend most of my time here with my documentary students.
Camera Lucida: So you just teach documentary and not fiction films?
Luis Alejandro Yero: I studied documentary here and had been doing so since 2018, and then in 2020 I was offered work in the documentary department in a very wide spectrum. I consider myself to be a filmmaker and not just a documentary filmmaker. My interest and practice in cinema is as a filmmaker and right now I am working on a fiction project. Therefore, I don't make any distinction and I don't categorize myself as a documentary filmmaker but a filmmaker. Sometimes my ideas or desire to make a film takes a documentary form and sometimes a feature film form. There are spaces in between that create potentialities for me.
Camera Lucida: One film, Memories of Underdevelopment by Tomas Gutierrez Alea, was an important film in world cinema history and the fact that it came before the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis. I mention this film now because in some ways that in your film Calls From Moscow, your friends are staying in Moscow and then another world crisis happens with the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. What do you think of how the Alea film connects to today?
Luis Alejandro Yero: It happened in a much unexpected way. We were already there and I remember before the beginning of the invasion, my friends in the western media were in absolute silence. They were telling me that Russia was going to invade Ukraine as they were moving their troops to the border. There was quiet hysteria but otherwise we were trying to live as normal in Moscow. However, suddenly the credit card did not work and we had to pay with cash. There were these little signs and suddenly, three days after we finished the shooting in February 2022, Putin announced his so-called Special Military Operation. We were very scared and so my producer and I decided we had to get out of Russia immediately. However, that is part of documentary film. We did not plan for documenting the invasion but then reality has these unexpected situations. This of course made the situation for the characters of the film all the more fragile.
Camera Lucida: Before that, in 2020 there was the Covid situation as well but you said that in Havana that year there was also social unrest. Has that changed at all, or for the better?
Luis Alejandro Yero: Not at all in fact the situation and pressure is getting worse. Under President Miguel Diaz-Canel there has been a mass exodus and all my generation have left the country, all my friends have left Cuba. The reaction from the government after the demonstrations of recent years has been brutal. The outcome has been repression and less freedom for the new generation of people that are trying to save the future of the country. When I leave the EICTV campus where I am teaching and go into the big cities like Havana, but also the other main cities, I am shocked to see empty streets. Just a few years ago when I was studying there was partying in the streets. I think what has happened since has been evident of a collapse in the society and the capacity of the government and also the lack of freedom and ideas about the future of the country.
Camera Lucida: The subjects in the film, the four main characters, did you know them well yourself before you made the film, were they friends of yours?
Luis Alejandro Yero: No, for about a year prior, I was making a lot of research about the film and I had a network of friends. My main concern was making the film and I was told that there was a transsexual network that was formed. For example, I once asked a friend why certain people were already in their house and was told that this is down to digital networks around the world, people who connect with each other. I think it is amazing how fast these people connect and get together. Let's say that through the internet I discovered and got to know a lot of film people through all the various social media out there. When I was in Moscow for the first two months I met a lot of people and that's how I met the group who I made the selection to become the main characters in the film as these four were the ones that I felt the most empathy with.
