¡Arriba las manos!

“The plane lumbered awkwardly and roared down the runway; then it disappeared silently into the air.” (Edmundo Desnoes, Memories of Underdevelopment).

The promise of the American Dream has driven hundreds of thousands of Cubans to undertake journeys that seem drawn from a film script. ¡Arriba las manos! brings together four unusual journeys made by Cubans in the hope of reaching the United States. The four stories share the same gesture: turning an aircraft, through theft, hijacking, or the diversion of its route, into a means of escape. The four cases speak of a life imagined elsewhere and, above all, of the forms that the desire to reach it can take.