Associate Producer: Luis Alvarez, Cynthia Barrera
Executive Producer: Lisandro O. Perez
Original Music: Juan Montoya, Carl Ferrari, Joe Pazos
It began with a bus crashing
through the gates of an
embassy in Havana and unraveled into one of the most dramatic episodes
in the history of human migrations. As Fidel Castro briefly allowed
Cubans to leave the island, nearly 130,000 of them left their homeland
in an unrelenting stream of vessels bound for the United States. 25
years later, the personal stories surrounding the Mariel Boatlift
continue to resonate with an energy that can only be described as
surreal and powerful.
The accounts of the boatlift itself
are harrowing. Many families say they were given only a few
minutes to pack their belongings before being split up and
loaded onto different boats for the journey.
To make his first-ever documentary
- on the Mariel boatlift - a young Lisandro Perez Rey knocked
on doors two years ago and tracked people from Havana to
Miami to a prison in rural Florida. His budget was nil. But
his curiousity was boundless.
