mi decisión/my decision (2012)

Luisa Maria Guell was a singer and a child actress before and a popular rising star after the Castro Revolution. The political aftermath of a society fundamentally transformed by a new ideology had a profound effect on the life and career of the young performer. The radical changes and intolerance of the communist system presented her, unprepared, with new and dire consequences that could not be ignored. Stripped of liberty and suddenly unable to allow her creativity to guide her, she found her creativity replaced with fear inside the closed, oppressive new society. Finding no other outlet, she made the devastating decision to leave her country, her family and her singing career at its peak as a teen idol. Her plan to escape culminated with one year of forced labor before she was allowed to leave Cuba. Her story continues with her creativity freed to triumph once again as a free human being until she was confronted once again by the ghost of another Marxist experience in Spain, which brought back her Cuban nightmare, forcing her to make the decision yet again to leave everything behind to seek refuge in the U.S. However, in the U.S., art and politics are as intermingled as in communist countries and while she attained success in her community, the doors remained closed in the American show business field in spite of her great, one-of-a-kind privileged voice and ability to sing not only in English but in other languages. Out of necessity, she also developed her abilities to manage her own career including all phases of arranging complex concerts. Being a Cuban American exile artist in the U.S. is an extremely difficult handicap to overcome. my decision presented her with the opportunity to tell her story and for viewers to learn whats behind the hauntingly beautiful music created by Luisa Maria Guell.