It’s Havana, a year before the 1959 revolution, and a group of young people are fighting against President Batista’s tyranny in a clandestine action cell. A dramatic story of love, solidarity, illusions and sacrifice based on real events. An incredible first film, with a tight script like a thriller, by the most important current Cuban director. The fictional characters of Nereida and Ernesto made the actors, Isabel Santos and Luis Alberto García, an inseparable part of the history of Cuban cinema. Pérez commented on his multiple award winning feature: “I always knew that my first film was going to be about [this], because at the age of fifteen, when I was discovering cinema, I discovered that people my age were fighting for the Revolution. I felt that there was an epic that I had to tell…I did not participate in the armed struggle…but my memory was what most marked the film. I always tried to make every image alive, credible.”

BOOK TICKETS 2.30pm, Sunday 16 March 2025 at The Garden Cinema, Screen 2.

Introduced by Screen Cuba team

Clandestinos/ Underground | Fernando Pérez | Cuba, 1987, ICAIC | 98m | 15

AWARDS  Coral Award for Best First Film, Best Actress (Isabel Santos), IX Festival of New Latin American Cinema, Havana (1987)

Best Direction, Best Male Performance (Luis Alberto García), XVIII Festival of Cartagena, Colombia (1988) 

Best Screenplay, San Juan Film Festival, Puerto Rico (1988)

Best Film, International Film Festival, Tashkent, (former) USSR (1988)

Inti Award, Peru Film Festival (1991)

CAST Luis Alberto García, Isabel Santos, Susana Pérez, Amado del Pino.

All films in Spanish with English subtitles