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Balseros (Balseros)

Carles Bosch & Josep M. Domènech
Spain / 2002 / 120 min / Spanish with English subtitles

In summer 1994, more than 50,000 Cubans took to the sea in a motley array of rafts and floating junk in an attempt to reach the Florida shores.Some time later, in the refugee camp in the U.S. base at Guantanamo, reporters were able to locate those who had been rescued at sea. Their families still in Cuba without news of them, except in the case of a woman who had wrecked his raftand had been forcibly returned to Cuban territory. This film shows in detail the evolution and sensitivity, his life in the U.S. and his stay in Cuba. His is the story of some of the true survivors of our time, the human adventure of a shipwrecked between two worlds.Shot with an intense sense of both immediacy and intimacy, Balseros dives in to the difficulties of pursuing the ’American Dream’.

Carles Bosch directed the Oscar®-nominated Balseros, which won a variety of international awards including an Emmy, a Peabody and those of a number of world-class festivals. His documentary feature Septembers was an IDFA finalist and took prizes at Miami and Malaga. Bycicle, Spoon, Apple, received the Goya, the Gaudí and the José María Forqué awards for Best Documentary of the Year. His work as a veteran reporter for 30 Minuts (TV3, Spain) has taken him to the doorstep of major world events: the first Gulf War, the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo and the Zapatista Revolution. Bosch has also chased stories in such countries as Afghanistan, Iran, Chad, Mozambique, Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Israel, among others.