Julian Schnabel chronicles the life of one of Cuba's most charismatic literary voices. The movie recounts the author's deprived rural upbringing and the intense love and support he receives from his mother. As a young man, Arenas is singled out by his teachers and encouraged to further his skills as a writer, bearing in mind the Castro regime's censorship of any work considered to be revolutionary or anti-authoritarian. Still, Arenas manages to smuggle his work out of the country through friends, who arrange for one of his novels to be published in France. Not only persecuted for his creative beliefs, the openly gay Arenas is jailed on a sex charge, later escapes custody only to be captured and persecuted later for his smuggled dispatches. In 1980, Arenas is finally allowed to leave Cuba for the United States, where he achieves freedom of expression but not prosperity.
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