Norheimsund, by Cuban director Ana A. Alpízar, is a 12-minute short film that will be screened at the Venice International Film Festival (taking place from August 27 to September 6, 2025) in Venice, Italy. [The film will be screened on September 4, 2025, at Sala Giardino. Also see our previous post Ana Alpízar’s “Norheimsund” at the Mostra di Venezia.]
In “La cineasta cubana Ana A. Alpízar conversa sobre su corto ‘Norheimsund’, que se estrenará en la Mostra di Venezia,” Eliecer Jiménez Almeida (Rialta) interviews the director. Here are excerpts.
In the panorama of contemporary Cuban cinema, few figures stand out with such force and originality as Ana A. Alpízar. Her career as a director, screenwriter, producer, and editor has led her to conquer important international festivals, consolidating a unique voice that explores, questions, and reinvents the narratives of the island and its diaspora. [. . .]
Norheimsund is not just a short film arriving at Venice: it is also a testament to the new directions of Cuban cinema, to the persistence of a generation that is committed to its own stories and dares to look beyond physical and symbolic borders. [. . .]
What was your scriptwriting process like? Are there autobiographical elements or documentary research? What is behind your idea?
To tell you the truth, this project arose from the story of the girl who loses her eyes. I grew up hearing this anecdote: “A Cuban woman married an Italian, and when she arrived in Italy, he operated on her and took out her eyes to give them to his daughter, who was blind. Then he sent her back to Cuba.” That legend impacted my childhood, and I retain it in my memory to this day: the danger, the disappointment, the failed Cinderella… I began writing this story as an excuse to tell that anecdote.
I’ve always been intrigued by pseudo-prostitution in Cuba. Something that isn’t quite prostitution but is still prostitution. That phenomenon, so Cuban and so much from the Global South, which only the poor understand… when someone shows you a photo of their seventeen-year-old daughter’s foreign boyfriend and says, “He’s a little old, but he doesn’t look bad, he’s very nice.” That courtship that becomes the center of attention for the entire family, the entire neighborhood…
I grew up with an Italian stepfather, so I was very close to all of this. Their friends often had incredibly young girlfriends, girls who wouldn’t have looked at them anywhere else in the world, but who in 1990s Cuba treated them like they were Mr. Man. And suddenly you saw the most conservative and protective mothers turn into fierce ones, willing to do anything to protect their daughters’ relationship.
I think my childhood and adolescence in Cuba were my greatest research. And the confirmation that, every time I return to Havana, nothing has changed. […]
To what extent do your identity and experience as a Cuban appear or are reflected, directly or subtly, in the short film?
That feeling of not wanting to be there, especially the dream of a better life out there. The willingness to make many sacrifices (even if they are of a different kind) to achieve that life. Above all, that sense of family responsibility. I think that in Cuba, it’s always the youngest who bear the burden of getting ahead. Because people age too quickly, they burn out too soon. And too early, they dump all the weight of the world on their children.
All the narrative elements of the short are strongly influenced by my experience as a Cuban: the Virgin, the candle, the cleansing… and of course: the heat (in Cuba, the heat follows you and haunts you) [“el calor te sigue y te persigue”]. I’m traumatized by the heat, and by those fans that don’t blow any air and that you have to bang on to get them started. I think the heat is a state of mind, one that makes Cuban reality even more agonizing. […]
How do you see the current state of Cuban cinema, and what place do you think Norheimsund occupies within this scene?
I strongly advocate going to Cuba to film, whenever possible. It’s difficult, yes. It’s also very risky. But I feel it’s our responsibility, at least, to try. This, of course, I say from the position of someone who has never suffered government censorship, which puts me in a privileged position. I fully understand filmmakers who don’t want to know anything about Cuba, or who the government would simply never let them go film. But there are others, like me, who still have a chance to tell our story. I hope Norheimsund opens the door a little in that regard. [. . .]
Excerpts translated by Ivette Romero. For full interview (in Spanish), see https://rialta.org/ana-a-alpizar-cortometraje-norheimsund-venezia/
See the interviewer’s bio at https://rialta.org/ana-a-alpizar-cortometraje-norheimsund-venezia/
Also see https://www.labiennale.org/en/cinema/2025