AllMovie

Friendship and a love of the written word binds two men together even as politics keep them apart in this documentary. Ernesto Santana and Jorge Mota are two close friends who grew up together in Havana. Both men developed a passion for writing in their teens, and they traveled in a circle of writers and musicians who encouraged one another's creative efforts. While Santana became a college professor and settled into life as a teacher and poet, Mota was more restless and dreamed of seeing the world outside Cuba. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, Cuba lost its greatest financial supporter, and the nation fell into deep poverty and political division, and when Fidel Castro announced in 1994 that the state would no longer prevent Cubans from leaving the island, Mota and his family took to the sea in a small boat in hopes of making their way to America; he was one of 33,000 Cubans who attempted to flee the country that summer. Santana, meanwhile, remained in Cuba and struggled with his countrymen through one of the most difficult periods in the nation's history. In 2001, Mota had become an award-winning journalist living in Chicago, while Santana had received Cuba's most prestigious literary honor, the Alejo Carpentier Award. With his prize came the opportunity for Santana to travel to Mexico for the first time to attend the Guadalajara International Book Fair; the trip also allowed him to see his good friend Mota for the first time since 1993. Dream Havana is a documentary which tells the true story of Mota and Santana's long friendship, their lives after parting ways, and their reunion in Mexico. Dream Havana received its world premiere at the 2006 Chicago International Documentary Festival.