12 Y Malecón, Habana

From the offset universal education was a fundamental principle of Cuba's Socialist system, and yet decade-long economic crises have seen this model start to come apart at the seams. Director Elí Roland Sachs offers insight into the everyday lives of Cuban students in and around Cuba's largest dormitory building, located directly on the country's most famous promenade: meals in the canteen and students cleaning the corridors. Discussions in the six-bed dorms on everyday problems: water, electricity, a lack of both. International and domestic students coexist, one of the latter reads Wladimir Kaminer in the original and discusses the German subjunctive, whilst in the corridor a mural painting covers the walls: Fidel Castro looks on, serious yet benevolent, with the heading “It was here that I became a revolutionary”. WMH