Light up the Void  

Seven Days in Havana is a collaborative film directed by seven international filmmakers—Benicio Del Toro, Julio Medem, Gaspar Noé, Pablo Trapero, Juan Carlos Tabío, Elia Suleiman, and Laurent Cantet—each directing a short segment corresponding to a day of the week. The film offers a multifaceted exploration of Havana, blending social realities, daily life, and poetic moments. Each segment reflects the director's personality, offering a mosaic of visions that oscillate between tenderness, humor, melancholy, and sometimes violence. The whole constitutes a fragmented yet vibrant portrait of the Cuban capital, far removed from tourist clichés.

“Ritual”: Desire, transgression, and tensions in Havana

In Seven Days in Havana, Gaspar Noé's segment, titled “Ritual,” does more than simply depict the city; it explores the shadowy aspects of urban and human life. Its central theme is desire and transgression, often underlying everyday interactions. Through his characters and their behavior, Noé explores the coexistence of pleasure and violence, seduction and threat, revealing a more unsettling and visceral dimension of Cuban society.

Havana thus becomes a testing ground for psychological experimentation, where human desires clash with taboos and social constraints. Noé explores intimacy and the confrontation with the forbidden, showing how the city and its inhabitants can be both fascinating and unsettling. The viewer is immersed in this atmosphere through characteristic aesthetic choices: saturated lighting, obsessive camera movements, and a suffocating framing.

In short, Ritual is not merely a portrait of Havana, but an exploration of the invisible tensions that permeate human relationships, where desire, transgression, and danger coexist in an urban space steeped in history and contradictions. This segment perfectly illustrates Noé's cinema: a cinema that delves into emotional and sensory intensity to reveal the shadows beneath the light.

Technical Specifications

Title: 7 Days in Havana
Year: 2012
Duration: 129 minutes
Genre: Drama / Anthology
Country: France, Spain
Language: Spanish (primarily)
Directors: Benicio Del Toro, Pablo Trapero, Julio Medem, Elia Suleiman, Gaspar Noé, Juan Carlos Tabío, Laurent Cantet
Main actors: Josh Hutcherson, Daniel Brühl, Emir Kusturica, Elia Suleiman, Vladimir Cruz
Filming location: Havana, Cuba