90 Miles on AllMovie

Juan Carlos Zaldivar was born and raised in Cuba, but in 1980 he and his family left the country for the United States as part of the 1980 Mariel boat-lift. Zaldivar had intense reservations about leaving his homeland behind, especially considering the anti-American propaganda that was a staple of the Cuban cultural diet, but he eventually came to enjoy life in Miami, though he often found himself thinking of his former home and resisting most Floridians' attitudes toward Cuba and Fidel Castro's regime. Zaldivar, now working as a filmmaker, decided to revisit Cuba with a camera crew in tow, and 90 Miles is his document that contrasts his life in the United States with day-to-day life in the nation he left behind. 90 Miles (the title refers to the distance between Cuba and the Florida coast) was shown in competition at the 2001 Los Angeles Film Festival.