Bionic Buzz® got to interview filmmaker Carlos Rafael Betancourt (co-director / co-writer) and actor Hector Medina (plays Ernesto) from the award winning film, THE LAST RAFTER. It is the first feature film of Cuban directors Carlos Rafael Betancourt and Oscar Ernesto Ortega, will premiere on HBO Latino on June 3, 2021 and will be available to stream on HBO Max.
The Last Rafter had a successful online festival run despite the pandemic and it gained special recognition in LatinX film circuits including opening for the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival.
This very personal film, made totally independently, became a unique story of success, with groundbreaking simultaneous theatrical screenings in Miami and Havana – something that hasn’t happened over the last 60 years of political tension.
The film touches on universal themes of toxic masculinity, homophobia, discrimination, privilege, and immigration. For years, many Cubans risked life and limb to cross the near 90-mile stretch between the island and the United States. They did it in motorboats, row boats, and handmade rafts, with the hope of a faster path to becoming U.S. Citizens under the ‘Wet Foot, Dry Foot’ policy.
This is a risk that Ernesto, a young Cuban philosopher and unlikely rafter, decides to take in order to find his long-lost father. But unbeknownst to him, that policy was revoked mere hours before his arrival and he becomes the first Cuban undocumented immigrant in the United States.
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