Before Night Falls

Synopsis

All societies have prejudices - as Before Night Falls shows, even those which claim to treat everyone equally. The film tells the tale of the Cuban poet and novelist Reinaldo Arenas, who despite having fought on the side of Fidel Castro's revolutionaries and won international acclaim for his writing, faced persecution in his own country for being a gay man. But despite being wrongly imprisoned for years, Arenas never lost his sense of individuality, or his desire to write. This is a moving and finely-crafted portrait of a man whose spirit would not be broken.