Blue Heart (2021)

Blue Heart (Spanish: Corazón Azul) is a 2021 independent sci-fi Cuban film directed, written and produced by Miguel Coyula, starring Lynn Cruz, Carlos Gronlier and Héctor Noas. The film premiered at the 2021 Moscow International Film Festival.

Plot

The film's plot takes place in a uchronia, serving as a connected, if nor a direct sequel to Coyula's 2003 debut film Red Cockroaches. In this alternative reality, Fidel Castro shepherds a program to create the New Man (utopian concept) with genetic engineering, and save the Cuban revolution. The experiment fails, with the resulting individuals being highly dangerous and unstable. They form a terrorist group, and threaten to destroy the very core of the society which created them. One of them, Elena, begins a journey in search of her origins.

Awards and nominations

Awards

Nominations

Production

The film was filmed in chronological order without permits over ten years. During this time several actors abandoned the project, most notably Héctor Noas, which forced constant rewrites of the screenplay. Another relevant event was the interrogation of photographer Javier Caso. Caso took still pictures on the set of Corazón Azul before being summoned by Cuban State security for an interview questioning his friendship with director Miguel Coyula and Lynn Cruz, who were both described by the agents as troublemakers who may be working for the CIA. Caso recorded the audio with a hidden cellphone, Coyula added visuals and posted it on YouTube. The decade-long production served as the backstory for the documentary Chronicles of the Absurd.

Critical reception

Latin American film scholar Paulo Antônio de Paranaguá described it as "One of the most exciting revelations of the 21st century". In Cineaste, film critic Matthew David Roe referred to Blue Heart as: "The culminating point of Miguel Coyula´s artistic growth... It stands as his most visceral experience". The Film Verdict’s Patricia Boero wrote "A complex, criptic, compelling film... It lingers in the mind as you continue to decipher its codes long after the screening has ended". Pablo Gamba described it at Los Experimentos as "emblematic of contemporary Cuban culture." French film critic Nelly Rajionavelo has highlighted the film’s formal and conceptual emphasis on image manipulation, describing it as a work in which “the manipulated image—reinterpreted, transformed, and resignified, is both the substance and the object of reflection in the film, which becomes at once its mirror and its critical revealer.”

Controversy

Blue Heart was censored at the Minsk International Film Festival in Minsk, Belarus. It was withdrawn from the main competition and placed in the Cinema of the Young section, despite the director being 44 years old at the time, and Corazón Azul was his fourth feature.

Something similar happened in Morocco at the International Cinema and commom Memory Festival in Nador (FICMEC). The festival staff removed the film from its program a few days before the festival started. Both in Belarus and Morocco, the film was catalogued as pornography and Coyula was asked to cut two scenes, which in both cases he refused.

In 2023, the Miami International Film Festival programmed a wide selection of Cuban films but excluded Blue Heart. Film critic Pablo Gamba wrote of this event: "Miguel Coyula has become the beacon for political discomfort. It’s an honor he owes not only to the cultural bureaucrats of Cuba, but also to those in Miami."

See also

Cinema of Cuba

List of films shot over three or more years

List of avant-garde films of the 2020s

List of science fiction films of the 2020s

References