Before Night Falls

The film is based on the life of Reinaldo Arenas, exiled Cuban novelist and poet, who was born in 1943 in Oriente Province, and died in New York City in 1990. The film contrasts his early years, a childhood of absolute poverty yet absolute freedom, with the horrors and difficulties he encounters as a writer and homosexual censored and persecuted in Castro’s Cuba and then as an exile in New York. At 14, Reinaldo was educated by the revolution. At 20, he won a National Book Award and published his first novel, Celestino Antes del Alba. In 1973 he was arrested, and his work confiscated. In 1980 Castro allowed anyone who was homosexual, mentally ill or had a prison record to leave Cuba. Arenas was among the 125,000 persons who left. But he didn’t find paradise in the United States… (www.mostradelcinemavenezia.com)