INTERVIEW: ‘Oceans’ focuses on Cuba’s past and present
Photo: Oceans Are the Real Continents, written and directed by Tommaso Santambrogio, opens Friday, Jan. 10 at the Film Forum in New York City. Photo courtesy of Film Movement / Provided by Foundry Comm with permission.
Oceans Are the Real Continents, the new movie written and directed by Tommaso Santambrogio, is actually three films in one. The movie tells three separate tales of contemporary Cuba, always with one eye on the unique past of this island nation. Oceans is set to open Friday, Jan. 10, at New York City’s Film Forum, with the writer-director in person for screenings throughout the weekend.
“It really was a long process,” Santambrogio said in a phone interview back in 2024.
The black-and-white feature, according to press notes, offers narratives that speak to the diversity of perspectives of the population of Cuba and an individual resident’s decision to either stay or leave. Santambrogio said he was interested in that dichotomy, and perhaps that’s why the first tale is about two artists who are in love with each other, but face unendurable obstacles when one wants to leave the country.
Another story focuses on a boy who loves baseball, a Cuban pastime, and how he’s anxious about a pending move to Miami, located across the ocean in southern Florida. The final pat of this triptych is the one segment that showcases how today’s population considers the past, specifically how an older widow struggles with the legacy of her marriage and her husband’s military deployment.
Santambrogio, who is Italian, has had a long connection with Cuba. He has found inspiration in the country and among its people for quite some time; in fact, Oceans began as a short film before it was lengthened into a feature.
“I have a long-running relationship with Cuba,” he said. “I go back every two years, so I grow together with the country, more or less. And [I] get to know the people, the real stories of their lives and spend time with them, and I started writing their stories. I really got in touch with them and with their stories, so I made it possible to make this movie. I started working on the idea of separation and of doing a human mosaic.”
Separation as a theme is what drives Oceans as a narrative, and separation came into fine focus these past few years as the world encountered many issues (and debates) surrounding immigration and migration, caused by war and poverty. Santambrogio recognized that migration has always been an important topic for filmmakers to tackle, but now seemed like a particularly resonant time period to delve into the matter.
“It was something urgent,” the director said. “For the characters, for the country, for what we’re talking about, so I ended up sharing four years with the characters. … It was sharing and talking and really building up the scenes and the structures of the characters and the narrative arc. It was a collective process.”
The idea to tell three separate tales came almost immediately to Santambrogio, who wanted to share different perspectives on separation, mostly because there are innumerable views on the difficult issue. Also, the anthology follows the chronology of a lifetime: One focuses on childhood, and the next focuses on young adulthood. Eventually the film closes with some time spent in the later years of one’s life.
“I think it was really interesting to have three different approaches, like a triptych,” he said.
The black-and-white nature of the cinematography helps tells the story as well. To outsiders, there are parts of Cuba that can feel stuck in time, especially in more rural settings away from the tourist crowd. Santambrogio said there may be horses walking through the city, old television sets from the 1970s, and antique cars that are decades old. Oceans showcases some of this fetishized nostalgia, but it doesn’t simply reside in the postcard images of the past. As a director, Santambrogio was more interested in authenticity and contemporary realism.
“The collective idea of Cuba is this colorful and joyful place with mojitos,” the director said. “I want to use a filter that erases all this collective imagery about the country. Let the audience get in touch more with the real stories and the real characters. I think this is wiser, an interesting aesthetic approach.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Oceans Are the Real Continents, written and directed by Tommaso Santambrogio, opens at New York City’s Film Forum Friday, Jan. 10. Click here for more information and tickets.
