MADRID, Spain.- The documentary Homeland and Life: The Power of musicdirected by Spanish singer-songwriter Beatriz Luengo, won an award in the Best Documentary category at the Los Angeles Film Festival.
The news was shared on social networks by the Cuban musician Yotuel Romero, Luengo’s husband and one of the protagonists of the audiovisual.
“My beautiful wife since the Cannes Film Festival —where she is promoting the series UPA Next— just called me crying to give me the news,” Romero said.
The singer, one of the interpreters of the song “Patria y Vida” that inspired the documentary, pointed out in the publication: “‘Patria y Vida’ was born from God and grows every day in the hearts of the people with the sole purpose of giving it a voice. To Cuba”.
Yotuel dedicated the recent award to the artivist and political prisoner Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and to the rapper Maykel Osorbo, also an interpreter of the song that won two Latin Grammys and who was sentenced by the island’s regime to nine years in prison.
The documentary Homeland and Life: The Power of music had its world premiere last March during the Miami Film Festival.
Lasting one hour and 20 minutes, it makes an intimate reflection on the origin of the theme “Patria y Vida” based on Yotuel’s personal history.
In addition, it summarizes in a very emotional way the history and the links that made the iconic song the anthem of the national rebellion against Castroism since on July 11, 2021 (11J).
Throughout the footage there are interviews with Gloria Estefan, the duo Gente De Zona and Camila Cabello, among other music personalities. As well as it compiles various images that show how much the musical theme has permeated on the Island.
After the world premiere of the audiovisual production, Beatriz Luengo declared: “There is a lot of heart here and above all there is a very big claim: that the people of Cuba who took to the streets on July 11 and could only see the negative part of this history, they were beaten, they put him in jail, they can see that with one day they went out into the streets they achieved all this, that the whole world looked at them, that the whole world talked about Cuba”.
