El Acompañante

Faced by an AIDS epidemic in the eighties, the Cuban government established a sanatorium in Havana's suburbs, intended to operate under military watch. Horacio, a former boxing champion, has fallen from favour due to a doping scandal, as a result of which he is required to serve as an honorary companion to Daniel. He is actually somewhat of a folk hero: he served with the Cuban military in Africa, where he caught the infection from a local prostitute. Daniel is determined to spend his dying days in freedom, and sees an opportunity on one of the rare trips to the city granted to inmates.

Pavel Giroud draws connections between the various taboos of Cuban society; the treatment of AIDS victims in the eighties and internationalist intervention in Angola and Mozambique. What starts out as a relationship strained by masculine pride, ends up with cutting insight into Cuban society and gender definitions, intensified by the isolated world of the AIDS clinic. WMH