"Las Raíces de mi Corazón"

"Las Raíces de mi Corazón" (The Roots of my Heart) is the first independently produced Cuban feature film that addresses the 1912 massacre of over 6,000 members of the Independents of Color - the hemisphere's first black political party outside Haiti. In 1908, the period following Cuban independence they organized to fight for their rights to full employment, education, political participation, and above all respect and dignity.

In the film, Merecedes, a woman from Havana, begins to decipher her family secrets when she receives a photo of her great-grandparents, María Victoria and José Julián. Between reality and the world of her dreams, she learns about José Julián's ties to the Independents of Color.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the men and women of the Independents of Color struggled to create a space for themselves in Cuban society leading to a tragic outcome, The Massacre of 1912. Many families suffered, but history imposed a silence, the same one that surrounds Mercedes' great-grandparents.