Before Night Falls

Before Night Falls spans the whole of Arenas' life, from his rural childhood and his early embrace of the Revolution to the persecution he would later experience as a writer and homosexual in Castro's Cuba; from his departure from Cuba in the Mariel Harbor exodus of 1980 to his exile and death in the United States. It is a portrait of a man whose search for freedom - artistic, political, sexual - defied poverty, censorship, persecution, exile and death.