Night Is Not Eternal

As "Night Is Not Eternal" (2024 release; 91 min) opens, we go to "Cuba 2012" and are introduced to Rosa Paya, a pro-democracy activist who is continuing the work of her father Oswaldo Paya. In a parallel story, we are in "Ghuangzhou, China, 2013" where the film makers document protests of ordinary Chinese citizens, demanding freedom. At this point we are less than 10 minutes into the mocie.

Couple of comments: this is the latest documentary from highly regarded writer-producer-director Nanfu Wang ("One Child Nation".). Here she brings the story of how she met Maria Paya a number of years ago at a film festival. Struck by the apparent parallels between what Paya was trying to do and what Nanfu was advocating, she decides to follow Paya and document her. Without disclosing any further details, this leads to some surprising moments. Apart from the Paya/Nanfu story, the movie provides yet another peak into what daily life in Cuba is like under the ruthless communist dictatorship.

"Night Is Not Eternal" recently premiered on HBO and then started streaming on Max, where I caught this the other night. If you are familiar with Nanfu's earlier work, or are interested in what life in Cuba is like, I'd readily suggest you check this out, and draw your own conclusion.

This movie almost tricked me into thinking it was actually advocating for the end of communism everywhere. Sadly, the filmmaker doesn't recognize what the real threat to freedom is in America and who is really advocating for the suppression of speech and totalitarian media. It's too bad too because Rosa Paya is doing fantastic and brave work for her country and I doubt she would have agreed to this if she had known it would minimize the communism in America so much. I highly recommend skipping this documentary entirely and instead looking into Rosa Paya's incredible work for Cuba, which she has clearly committed to continuing for the rest of her hopefully long life.

The harsh world of communism inside of Cuba and, somewhat top, of China, are exposed in this sad yet inspired work of Paya. You are brought into life in Cuba where.times are harsh, life is tough, those who question the government are harassed and can be killed. For those who have not been exposed to life in modern Cuba, it is eye opening! This is a good exposure for any American who may not understand how communism works and how the governments evolve. This is a stark picture and shows the limited life and lack of freedom in the lives of those herein. The film is interesting and the cinematography is spectacular.

Almost turned it off after a painful 40+ minutes devoid of any proper context regarding the historical climate and ideological forces in Cuba - until the Trump 'moment' and Nanfu clarifying what state sponsored capitalism is.

What's so aggravating about this film is Nanfu doesn't bother giving us the political ideology or political party, The Christian Liberation Movement, of Rosa Maria's father, Oswaldo. All we get is the usual bromides of "he fought for Democracy, "liberte", Freedom, et al." and no clear definition by the filmmaker or her subject on what those mean. Nor did we get any substantive idea on what his petition was and what ideological forces supported it.

Most worrisome is we don't even get a peak at who's funding Maria, who somehow has infinite capital to travel between the states, Cuba, and end up with 1 on 1 meetings with POTUS (cough the federalist society and right wing non-profits).

There are by far more interesting people to interview in Cuba who don't have any capital or political economy, yet we never ever hear from them in this film. But I guess a car following them needs to take up 10 mins of this film to show the paranoia of Maria?

Then the film ends on the sort of juvenile angst form of idealism in which dissenting to dissent is the truest form of freedom. How is this no different than the Trotskyists????

Tldr: the liberal filmmaker gain concious and is somehow surprised that a Cuban national in Miami is actually conservative. Wow, only if there was decades of precedent.