La Música de las esferas

Cuban artist and filmmaker Marcel Beltrán’s eloquent nonfiction feature pays homage to his parents’ enduring love while pondering his country’s turbulent history. Beltrán’s father Mauricio and mother Regina met in the 1980s. Equally committed to socialist ideals, they started a life together, even though Regina’s father rejected Mauricio on account of his race. Beltrán draws out what was sacrificed as his parents forged into the austerity of the 1990s, simultaneously confronting the fraught politics of family and nation both. Visiting old friends and old haunts, The Music of the Spheres functions as a travelogue of the past, one steeped in the hues and sounds of memory: the patter of rain; love-letters; painterly images; moments of silence, as though what matters is not what can be uttered but, rather, those things that can only be felt.