Filmmaker Lázaro González will reflect on his ongoing process of creating a counter-archive of the most significant migratory crisis to date in this hemisphere: the Mariel Boatlift. In his second feature film, the documentarian addresses how this exodus was also a notorious queer migration, instigated by the Cuban government's institutional homophobia, and one that remains as a gap in the official history of this Caribbean island. As a living counter-archive, Sexile uses cinematographic devices to represent the oblivion of thousands of queer Cubans who were expelled from their country in 1980 and forced to resettle in the United States. This hybrid research endeavour also highlights the extent to which the desired freedom of Marielitos was vexed by racism, homophobia, resettlement issues, and the AIDS epidemic. For González, making a film becomes more than a means to represent the unspeakable, it is also a way of questioning the unbearable traumas of being in sexile.
