Cuban Yordanka Ariosa wins Best Actress at San Sebastian Festival

HAVANA TIMES — Yordanka Ariosa of Cuba won the San Sebastian Film Festival award for Best Actress on Saturday for her role as a prostitute in “The King of Havana”, adapted by director Agusti Villaronga from the novel with the same name by Pedro Juan Guitiérrez.

The film was orginally scheduled to be shot in Havana but the Cuban cultural authorities got cold feet at the last minute causing an expensive move to recreat the sets in the Dominican Republic.

Synopsis of the film:

Agustí Villaronga adapts the novel of the same name by Pedro Juan Gutiérrez. Recently escaped from reformatory, young Reinaldo tries to get by in the streets of Havana in the late 90s, one of the worst decades for Cuban society. Hopes, disillusionment, rum, good humour and above all hunger, accompany him in his wanderings until he meets Magda and Yunisleidy, survivors like himself. In one or the other’s arms, he will try to escape the material and moral misery surrounding him, living love, passion, tenderness and uninhibited sex to the limit.