In the summer of 1994, a team of public television reporters filmed and interviewed seven Cubans a few days before their risky venture of setting out to sea in homemade rafts to reach the coast of the United States. Six made it far enough to be picked up at sea by the U.S. Coast Guard. When these balseros (rafters) were finally allowed to go to the United States, the film crew went with them to a string of several cities. Seven years later, the film crew visits them again, to discover that 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.
Direction
Two directors, six years, zero distance from danger.
Production
Actual rafts, actual ocean, actual stakes.
Director
Josep Maria Domènech
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The directors embedded with actual rafters for years, capturing footage that U.S. Coast Guard initially tried to confiscate.
This premiered right as the 1994 exodus was still reshaping Miami politics—making it immediate history, not retrospective comfort.
ES
