Balseros

Balseros
by Josep Maria Dom?nech, Carlos Bosch

Balseros
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DVD Cover Information

Actor: Bill Clinton, Fidel Castro, Guillermo Armas, Maria Celeste Arraras, Rafael Cano
Director: Carlos Bosch, Josep Maria Dom?nech
Cinematographer: Josep Maria Dom?nech
Writer: Carlos Bosch
Editor: Ernest Blasi
Producer: Danielle Schleif
Producer: Loris Omedes
Producer: Maria Jose Solera
Producer: Roca Tom
Producer: Tom Roca
Writer: David Trueba
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 120 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-07-26
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: New Video Group

Movie Reviews of Balseros

Movie Review: An Interesting Look
Summary: 4 Stars

This was an interesting documentary about a brief period of time during the Clinton administration in which Cubans were so desperate to leave Cuba (either to reunite with family in the United States or to come to what they thought were cities of gold) that they risked their lives and took to the sea on flimsy rafts that I wouldn't get into a pool on. The film documented several people making their rafts, putting them out to see, being turned back to Cuba to be held at Guantanamo Bay, being given lottery tickets to come to the U.S. and then how they faired once they got here. It seemed, for many, to be a hard life they were leaving and a hard life they were coming to. The documentary doesn't focus much on the politics of what was going on at the time -- there are some brief mentions of Castro opening the flood gates and letting people leave if they wanted and Clinton turning people away for a brief time, but most of the film discusses the hopes and dreams of people thinking there was a better way of life out there and how desperate they were to get to it.

An interesting film and worth watching for some perspective.

Summary of Balseros

An Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary Feature, BALSEROS is the heartrending yet triumphant account of seven Cuban refugees--and their families--who risked their lives to venture towards America's shores on homemade rafts. The Village Voice raves that BALSEROS is an "engrossing documentary" with an "extraordinary sense of recording stories as they unfold!" While Presidents Clinton and Fidel Castro argued over the closing of Cuba's coast in the chaotic summer of 1994, nearly 50,000 "balseros" (a slang term for Cuban rafters) set out towards Florida, navigating the shark-infested waters on vessels made of wood, nails, and tar. The television reporting team of Carles Bosch and Josep M. Dom?nech began filming this remarkable story over those landmark 15 days. Then, as most of the rafters were picked up by the U.S. Coast Guard, Bosch and Dom?nech continued to follow their lively cast of characters, some of whom were detained for more than a year at the Guantanamo naval base before finally being allowed onto American soil.

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