With the screening of the film The Mafia's Paradise - Cuba before the 1959 Revolution, the Globale Film Festival in Germany drew the curtains on its 16th edition, dedicated to Cuba.

The event, which has been held since 2004 in the city of Leipzig, exhibits audiovisuals that document the global effects of the capitalist economy and the resistance against it, which is why the tightening of the US blockade against the Caribbean island was the focus of the opening day.

According to one of the film's directors, German Hans-Peter Weymar, it recreates the links between Cuba´s dictator Fulgencio Batista (1952-December 1958) and the American mafia in Havana before the revolutionary triumph.

Regarding his motivations for this production, Weymar shared his vision of the blockade, the impact of which he learned about first-hand during his stay in the largest of the Antilles, while highlighting the initiatives being developed in his country in support of Cuba, such as the UnBlockCuba 2020 campaign.

In this regard, he also referred to a petition against the blockade supported by about 60 personalities of culture and science of the European nation that has more than 50,000 signatures online and of which he is one of the initiators.

Until November 7, the event will take place in 50 open-air locations due to the SARS-Cov-2 coronavirus pandemic and will exhibit two other works about Cuba by German director Tobias Kriele.

Born in Berlin in 2003, the Globale Film Festival spread to other cities and countries with the purpose of making visible the different struggles that radically oppose a globally dominant system, where capitalist exploitation, patriarchal violence, racism and discrimination threaten life and its future.