Calls from Moscow

Luis Alejandro Yero’s striking first feature focuses on a group of migrants and their temporary dwelling in a snowy Moscow high-rise complex. The Russian capital was a pathway for the four young queer Cubans seeking to emigrate from the island, until Russia’s invasion of Ukraine put their fate in limbo.They live in the city as migrants, some illegal, others recently arrived with a tourist visa. They work at whatever they can find, whether cleaning groceries or as telemarketers selling medicine. They can be as fabulous as they want in the apartment, but the elevator that brings them down to the Moscow streets is already a different space, where they avoid attracting attention; Russia and Cuba are so very far apart.Spare and intensely felt, the film records their connections to the outside world—phone calls with loved ones, immigration service lines, even remote work—that punctuate the silence and bring small comforts. Far away from the city streets where a bleak war campaign is taking hold, Calls from Moscow quietly contemplates an internal world of waiting.