Chronicling the fates of seven Cuban refugees over seven years, this documentary combines the immediacy of breaking news with the narrative richness and complexity of great fiction. In 1994, when Fidel Castro declared that his government would no longer stop Cuban boats attempting to reach the United States, Catalan journalists Carles Bosch and Josep Domènech traveled to Havana to interview a few of the thousands of desperate people setting out in makeshift rafts on the “straits of death.” This footage alone is an extraordinary document, but the real drama of the film unfolds as the directors follow the refugees to the American-run detainee camp in Guantánamo and eventually to the United States. Bosch and Domènech refuse to take a political stance, but their elegantly edited presentation of the rafters' experiences offers sharp lessons in American isolation and the meanings of “freedom”: freedom to seek solace in religion or drugs, to be with loved ones or forget them, to buy or be bought.