Cuban filmmaker and producer Lester Hamlet, who denounced two weeks ago that the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC) prohibited him from returning to the island, announced his arrival in the United States.
In a short video shared on his social networks on Monday, Hamlet appears in an airport walking towards a friend whom he hugs, visibly moved. The filmmaker does not identify the place, but accompanies the images with the song It’s a Beautifil Day, by Michael Bublé, and the words: “Friendship and loyalty, above all things!”. On his social networks, some of his relatives greet him: “Welcome to the United States.”
Last August 24, Hamlet posted on his Facebook wall that the ICAIC had applied a sanction that prevented him from returning to Cuba for the next five years.
The ICAIC had applied a sanction that prevented him from returning to Cuba for the next five years.
Immediately, the institution responded with another Facebook postdenying the sanction and clarifying that they had called the filmmaker because he had left Cuba for Mexico to an event in the state of Quintana Roo, with an official passport and this “is only valid within the dates for which it is requested.”
“In the exchange of WhatsApp messages between Lester and the ICAIC official, the latter asked him if he was already in the country. Lester asked to call him by phone and, in the telephone communication, he informed the official that he had not yet returned to Cuba. and that his decision was not to do it,” explained Tania Delgado, vice president of the institution.
The Minister of Culture, Alpidio Alonso, also came along, who on Twitter assured that Lester Hamlet can “enter Cuba whenever he wishes. It is a constitutional right. Anything else they have said from the ICAIC Protocol is a mistake.”
However, the artist insisted that he was prevented from returning, because “they do not want at home those of us who have different ideas” about freedom and the homeland. “I accept the gift with honor and I venture to restart my life in another place, at 51 years old, full of new illusions and under the impact of knowing exile in the first person,” he wrote that August 24.
Born in Havana in 1971, Lester Hamlet has directed fiction, advertising, musical and documentary short films, and has received several official awards throughout his career, such as the Caracol Award from the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba.
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