In Havana in the nineteen sixties, there were 140 movie theaters. Only a dozen remain today. For ten years, the cinema industry was a pillar of the Cuban Revolution, but the regime’s hardening and the economic recession precipitated its decline. Fifty years later, only a dozen movie theaters are still running in Havana, while a new generation of bold filmmakers struggles for the very existence of Cuban cinema. In the Heat of the Cold Years tells the story of Revolutionary Cuban cinema through the memories of a choral of elder filmmakers, such as Luciano Castillo, the director of the national film archives, as he scrambles for the preservation of this crumbling cultural legacy, and through a group of young Cuban filmmakers struggling to make their first feature film.

Pioneering Spanish filmmaker, actress and producer Margarita Alexandre (1923-2015) reminisces about her life and career during a trip to Cuba, where she worked during the early years of the Cuban Revolution.

Cuba is not a country for young gays. Teen rent boy Reinier falls in love with a mate in the slum soccer field in their neighbourhood in Havana. Although obsessed with moneymaking to hold up his baby, teen wife, and wife's grandma, gambler Reinier always fails to get the stroke of luck he looks for. At the same time he cannot help being infatuated by Yosvani. Handsome Yosvani will give up his older, wealthy girlfriend (whom he hooked up to pay for a lavish life in the big city), and the work he does for her father, a loan thug, so much in love he is with Reinier. But the boys would fight hard to keep this love in the reckless Havana streets.

A young American boy is trying to break into the acting business, and goes to Cuba during a film festival.

Amor Crónico follows Grammy-nominated, Cuban-born CuCu Diamantes as she embarks on a whirlwind tour of her home country. Interweaving glamorous live performances with a fictional romance, the film pays tribute to the history of cinema in surreal fashion. Backed by a high energy Latin soundtrack, Cucu's journey is a visual love poem to the sites, sounds, and people of Cuba.

In the Cuba of these times, where everyone sells something, the young Nácar wants to sell her only property, the family vault.

An unclaimed fortune, grown for centuries in a British bank account, becomes a potential windfall for Bernadito Castiñeiras and the residents of the tiny village of Yaragüey, Cuba. To receive his massive inheritance check, Bernadito must prove his lineage to the Castiñeiras nuns who first populated the region. In an isolated and impoverished town where many residents share the same surname, a feud breaks out between the "Castiñeiras" and "Castiñeyras" families.

A look at the life and work of Cuban filmmaker Tomas Gutierrez Alea.

Using found footage, still photographs, animations, and occasional original footage, “The Mist in the Palm Trees” purports to tell the story of Santiago Bergson, writer, physicist, and sometime pornographer who sold arms to the Resistance in France, flirted with the Nazis, collaborated on Orson Welles’ “War of the Worlds” broadcast and helped build the A-Bomb.

Mercedes and Pedro, Cuban producers and screenwriters, travel to Spain to close an agreement with Alberto, a Spanish producer. Together, they try to make a film about Cuban reality. A movie about those who leave the island, those who return, but also those who still want to leave but cannot. A simple idea that will slowly become more complicated because Spaniards and Cubans have a very different point of view on this reality.

A woman finds herself going from having no man in her life to having more suitors than she can handle in this offbeat romantic drama. Rosa is an artist in her early forties who is recently divorced and looking for a new relationship. Unfortunately, few immediate prospects are on the horizon, and Rosa spends much of her free time commiserating with her close friend Jaime, a gay actor her own age. After consulting Andronica, a fortune teller, Rosa is told that relationships with three different men are on the horizon for her, and soon she finds herself falling for Gustavo, an architect from Argentina. While in Spain, Gustavo is staying at a hotel run by Greta, who is the unwitting center of a web of romantic entanglements; her daughter, is involved with Juan, a delivery boy for a pizza parlor who also has his eye on Rosa, while Greta's ex-husband (Bob Wilson) is also hoping to win Rosa's heart, in his case through poetry.

Marga is having a streak of bad luck. Through her friendship with Rosa, she tries to regain her self-confidence, but love interests again create conflict. It is while developing a relationship with a handsome gay sculptor ten years her junior: Iñaqui, that she starts to improve. However, Marga and Iñaqui go beyond friendship, but are frustrated by their limitations. Ultimately, the two may have to settle for an "impossible" love relationship, as their unique best road to happiness

Walter, an aspiring musician from Madrid, has a lot of troubles. After finding a videotape, he learns something which will alter his whole life, and put his Madrid problems on hold. In the tape, a Cuban woman confesses to being his mother. She is waiting for him in Havana. Walter goes to Havana to see his mother. There, the plot thickens with the addition of the mother's daughter, and a Spanish airline crew member, who round out the quartet.

Maqroll, Ilona, and Abdul all share a common dream: to sail the world in a tramp-steamer. But who could afford such a thing? Over the years they have become separated. Alone in Panama City, smuggler Maqroll is finding neither great success nor happiness — until the tropical rains come, bringing Ilona: friend, lover, and partner in crime. Abdul, in Morocco, has found a steamer to suit them. In Panama, Ilona and Maqroll begin a new scheme, in search of impossible wealth. But fate has further twists in store.

During the 'Special Period', the members of a funeral procession cross paths with truckdrivers who have to take the same route, and begin to talk about God and the world. They discover that life for both groups has many similarities, as well as a lot of differences.

Set in 1979, following a young Communist man's relationship with a gay Catholic writer, exploring tolerance, inclusion, homophobia and challenging its Cuban audience with great humour. Based on the short story by Cuban writer Senel Paz.

Jose Luis, a young boy with aspirations to become a scriptwriter and director of cinema, is dazzled on having known the beautiful Sissy. To impress her, he appears as the director who looks for a not professional actress. She, that the whole life has dreamed of being 'discovered' but that it is not naive with men, pretends not to be interested. They begin a relationship in wich both are not as they wanted to be.

An approach to a living myth of dance, Alicia Alonso, from the viewpoint of her passion, tenacity and devotion to art. It includes fragments of the ballet Giselle, choreographed by her, based on the original by Jean Coralli and Jules Perrot, and of La Diva, choreographed by Alberto Méndez.

Matanzas, Cuba, 1913. Two young people who are in love communicate through letters written by penman. When the young man leaves town, to become a pilot, the girl discovers she is really in love with the one who wrote the letters.

It reflects the transformation which a woman undergoes in the crisis of personal fulfillment that her husband is going through. In the middle of a complex process, marked by contradictions and failures, she will grow and express her independence as a human being. She will be another woman, determined to continue the difficult and unknown daily struggle.

A theater director and script-writer falls for a female worker from the Havana docks, but his machismo, social and working conflicts, and the Cuban woman's condition interfere with their relationship.

A pious plantation owner attempts to teach Christianity to 12 of his slaves by inviting them to participate in a reenactment of the Last Supper.