Los minutos, las horas
2009 · 11m · Cuba
Directed by Janaína Marques Ribeiro
Genres: drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
In a modest Havana neighborhood, Yoli, a lighter-seller, has put her own life aside to care for her mother Marlène, who cannot bear to be left alone; one day a man invites her out, and for the first time she decides to wait for him, refusing her mother's company.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Everyone expects the caregiver to sacrifice everything; Ribeiro just lets Yoli *wait* instead, and suddenly the whole suffocating premise flips into something quietly radical—a film about refusal masquerading as a love story.
A formally restrained meditation on dependency and desire that sits comfortably within the Latin American contemplative tradition, though the 2009 timestamp suggests it may have arrived ahead of the current wave of such work.
The genius move is structural—Ribeiro doesn't show us the man or the date, just Yoli choosing to *wait*, and that single absence of explanation becomes the entire film's emotional engine, doing everything with implication.
Reviews
Avec pudeur et habilité, la réalisatrice, Janaína Marques Ribeiro, parvient à capter un moment singulier de la vie d'une femme partagée entre ses désirs et ses devoirs. Un triptyque psychanalytique pour un film d'écoles juste et vibrant.