Cuba has selected the debut feature by Sebastián and Rodrigo Barriuso Un Traductor as its candidate in the foreign language competition for the 92nd edition of the Academy Awards. The film staring Brazilian actor Rodrigo Santoro had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2018.
Based on a true story, in the wake of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, Malin, a Russian literature professor at the University of Havana, is separated from his family and job when he is assigned to work as a translator between Cuban doctors and children arriving from the USSR to receive medical treatment for radiation poisoning. Torn from the abstract world of academia and forced into the relentlessly real world of medicine, Malin must find ways to cope in order to stop his growing depression.
Un Traductor becomes the 21st Cuban candidate to the Oscars since the Caribbean submitted its first contender in 1977 and has nabbed one nomination since then for Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabío’s Strawberry and Chocolate in 1994.
