Las muertes de Arístides
Arístides died of a gunshot when he was 19 years old, while he was doing his Military Service in the Cuban Navy. He was shot in the chest at close range by the soldier who was supposed to relieve him in duty, with a Makarov PM handgun made in USSR. There are no images of him; just a letter he wrote to his sister a few hours before dying, whose reply never came to be.
For the innovative, original and intimate approach to the subject of war, life and death, the Ecumenical Jury gives a Commendation to The Many Deaths of Arístides. The animation of a silhouetted figure, journeying on a boat through the dark fuses with the frozen moments of time as we hear the letter of a young man that never returned home. His prayer for Olga centralises the film as hope, as a cry to God for the life of the other, as love outshining the depths of darkness. The film makes memory alive and breaks the time boundaries, transcending visually what cannot be described in words, and as such it is a work of pure cinema.