Campesino (2019)

• 90%
• 2019

Two hours west of Havana in the rust colored countryside sits Vinales, a destination famous for growing some of the best tobacco in the world, where everything is done by hand, fields are still plowed with oxen and the modern world slips away. Campesino celebrates the lives of the Cuban tobacco farmer as introduced to us by an American whose passion has been to photograph them for 15 years. Carl Oelerich is a hard working family man who makes his living as a skycap at the Salt Lake City International Airport. An amateur photographer, with a gift, Carl's B&W images taken throughout the years on film beautifully capture a world on the brink of extinction. Carl begins his journey as an impartial observer, but over the years what begins as a photographic project with his subjects and business relationship with his local guide Juan, turns into something deeper. Despite not sharing a common language, the Campesino's warm to Carl and he to them. It is through Carl's long lasting ...