The Sound of Things

Cuba, summer of 1994. In the midst of período especial, one of the greatest crises in the country’s history, thousands of Cuban rafters try to reach the United States illegally, never sure if they’ll make it out alive. With holidays starting, Carlos plunges into a carefree August, wandering around with his friends and falling in love for the first time. Little does he know about the country’s uncertain future, and in this hot summer, the world of Carlos will turn upside down.

María José is 25. Her life moves back and forth between the monotony of class at the university, her eternally distant parents, and a couple of alternative spaces where she can explore her own and others’ limits. One day, she meets Javier, a boy she really likes and tries to have a relationship with, but her behaviour starts changing radically. In fact, she’s a few months into her pregnancy and no one knows.

When humanity evacuates the planet because of the imminent collision with an asteroid, Manuel is set apart and left behind. Now he will have to survive an automated last resort mission to save the Earth. It’s the only option to reunite with his brother.

Joel is a 28 year old slacker who gets up every morning to drink beer and play his guitar. His older sister interrupts his daily routine by asking him to take care of her 6 year old kid. Joel thinks he can handle it, but things get complicated when the kid disappears from the house.

Selva, thirteen years old, discovers that when we die we just shed our skin. We can turn into wolves, goats, shadows, or anything as long as your imagination allows it.

Alejandra and Joaquín are a couple marked by his ups and downs. His emotional instability has left him unemployed again, which has made the relationship even more complicated. Alejandra does not understand why everything is so difficult for her husband, nor the reasons for his unhappiness, when he seems to have everything.

Thoughtfully, lovingly, Aurora tells the story of an unwanted pregnancy. Alongside her work as an architect, 40-year-old Luisa gives inspirational creative workshops to children. One day, she comes across 17-year-old Julia by the school toilets; it turns out she has unintentionally become pregnant. Luisa decides to help her – in the process manoeuvring herself into a difficult position somewhere between friend, teacher and mother figure. Or does she secretly enjoy playing this role?

Raised in a repressive era where sexuality was taboo, Ana, Patricia, and Mayela found their understanding of womanhood based on unspoken rules and implicit impositions. Now, their fearless voices incarnate in a single 65-year-old woman, who revisits a kaleidoscopic life of intertwined memories, secrets, and hidden desires.

Hernandez had already made films in Guatemala and Mexico and this time found inspiring locations, unusual atmosphere and enthusiastic young people in Costa Rica. In this consciously unpolished film, the rebellious girls Sole and Ana open the trunk of a car in grandma’s garden and find something they’d rather immediately forget.

Recently divorced, 72-year-old Violeta lives alone in her childhood house, tending to her lush tropical garden and making plans to turn her property into a boarding house. When she discovers the bank is about to take away her house, she breaks all the rules to hold onto her home and her freedom.

"Delirio" tells the story of Masha, an 11-year-old girl. Who suddenly moves along with her mother Elisa, to the house of her grandmother Dinia, who is beginning to lose her memory. The coexistence between these three women triggers a delusion around the presence of a man inside the house that nobody sees.

The Nicaraguan border in the eighties. Eleven-year-old Claudia and her younger sister experience the street fighting at first hand outside their car window. Their parents are Sandinista activists and, although the family is now escaping to neighbouring Costa Rica, the struggle continues. Their parents fire off terse commands and the girls are packed off to their relatives. The film focuses on the point of view of the two sisters, who are very close, as they learn more than they are able to cope with, but too little really to understand. A revolutionary struggle, seen through the eyes of children.

Luisa and Antonio surrender to the game of keeping tricks up their sleeves, of disagreements and reconciliations. Luisa follows with curiosity the thread of the words while Antonio imagines a movie inhabited by Elsa and Miguel: some fictional characters blurred in the middle of a deep sentimental crisis; a he and a she confused and lost in the rainy labyrinth that sometimes we call love.

Irene is a single mother who works in a photocopying business. She lives with Santiago, her seven year old son, and her controlling mother Dinia. Then she meets Diego. They go out, she gets drunk, and the failed date triggers in Irene a crisis concerning her sexuality, her motherhood, and the relationship with her mother.

After years away from each other, a group of friends is about to meet in the study of a men who has died four years ago in mysterious ways.

The 8-year-old son of Ignacio and Sara is dead, Sara wants a divorce and goes into a deep depression, but she soon discovers that she is pregnant again and must rethink the separation from her husband.

Condemned to live in scarcity behind a colossal wall that divides Gabhán City in two, Alba is part of a network that distributes medicines and water to the most needy in a clandestine hospital. Her godmother, Lucre, seeks to save her by risking her life in a covert traffic of illegal people to the other side of the wall. Alba refuses to leave her people and the hospital, so Lucre is forced to lie to her in order to convince her and thus embark her on a journey across the border that changes her life forever.

Maria Alejandra is a therapist and in the middle of a pandemic she is consulting online. Karla, her patient, is desperate about her boyfriend and while they talk, the connection falls on Maria Alejandra's side and she believes that Karla is no longer there.

Nina and Laura are a couple whose four year-old son Mateo has just died. Laura moves back to Chile seeking the comfort of her family while Nina, intending to reunite with her shortly, is left to tie up loose ends at home: storing Mateo's things and renting out their house. 'What a big space such a little body can fill, what a massive abyss there is now between your mom and me'.

When Ana investigates the attack in which her father died forty years ago, the mysterious recognition of a possible witness takes her on a journey to the place where the events occurred. In that border place, Ana sees in that enigmatic man something more than a witness.