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This 2002 documentary from Carles Bosch and Josep María Doménech achieves both an honest portrait of individual lives and an examination of resonant cultural, political, and historical themes in its account of the fates of a handful of Cuban exiles who found refuge in America. For a brief period in 1994, Castro allowed Cubans to flee to the US without restrictions. Thousands of balseros set sail for Miami in flimsy homemade rafts. Some of those made it, and as the film recounts with sometimes stunning irony, their dream of fleeing impoverished Marxist Cuba for the consumer paradise of the United States involved a few nightmarish twists. Combining Werner Herzog’s Stroszek, Julian Schnabel’s Before Night Falls and Michael Apted’s 7 Up series, Balseros conjures the epiphanies possible only in real life. In English and Spanish with English subtitles. (120 minutes)
BY PETER KEOUGH
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