A haunting yet, at times, frustratingly constrained portrait of isolation and uncertainty as men who chose to risk persecution for their livelihoods face the prospect of becoming trapped in a country that, for many, was likely a stepping stone to Europe. Calls from Moscow (Llamadas desde Moscú) is showing at BFI Flare (BFI Southbank) on March 15 and 16. For availability, please visit the BFI Flare ticket site (click here)
“Cuba is Russia’s Hawaii.” Russia and Cuba have been closely connected as economic, social and tourist allies for many years. However, despite the closeness of their relationship, there are stark differences between Cuba and its very distant partner in gay rights. In recent years, Cuba has embraced its LGBTQ+ community with a raft of protective measures, building on the foundation that sex between same-sex adults aged over sixteen has been legal in Cuba since 1979. You have to, therefore, ask why any LGBTQ+ adult would travel undocumented to Putin’s oppressive, homophobic and violent Russia in search of a better life.
The answer is in a dire economic situation, and an urgent need for financial hope and security. Over the past five years, Cuba has suffered from growing food, medicine, fuel, power, and consumer goods shortages, its tourist industry plummeting following COVID and then the war in Ukraine, while censorship has grown. Young people have fled, with many leaving not by choice but necessity; equality is good, but it means nothing if you can’t eat.
Luis Alejandro Yero’s debut documentary feature, Calls from Moscow (Llamadas desde Moscú), highlights how the journey to a hostile land is fraught with risk as four LGBTQ+ adults find themselves stuck in Moscow as Putin prepares to invade his neighbour, Ukraine. They don’t know each other and work in industries ranging from construction to online sales, but they share one thing in common: their Soviet tower-block home and their urgent phone calls, searching for security in a country of none.
As they search YouTube and TikTok for videos and music that offer a glimmer of light, Yero’s quiet, at times fragmented, documentary observes the lives of these men as they sit in limbo, neither part of the unfolding invasion nor separate from the waves of Putin’s actions. They are outsiders as they stare at the bare walls of their apartments and look out of the windows of their shared grey blocks at the cold sky of a country that couldn’t be further from Cuba’s colours and sounds. But there is no simple or easy escape.
The result is a haunting yet, at times, frustratingly constrained portrait of isolation and uncertainty as men who chose to risk persecution for their livelihoods face the prospect of becoming trapped in a country that, for many, was likely a stepping stone to Europe.
Yero’s Calls from Moscow offers some fascinating discussion points but never allows for a broader exploration of the reasons, choices and stories that brought each of the men we follow to this point. Ultimately, this leads to a lack of connection between the audience and filmmaker in exploring the journey taken and the one yet to come as Russia further becomes a pariah state.
However, despite this weakness, mobile conversations offer glimpses of the impossible choices each man has faced and the complex relationship between LGBTQ+ rights, economic migration and oppression. Some will find this short 70-minute documentary far too cold and distant, but for those willing to listen to each phone conversation and its underlying messages, Calls for Moscow offers a fascinating if incomplete portrait of the complex and uneasy ongoing relationship between two Cold War allies.
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