The words of a humble fisherman from Havana named Julián became the viral message of a video on Instagram, posted by the Colombian filmmaker José Alejandro González.
The reel on the account @habitantefilm has garnered over a million views and 811 comments within just a few days. The footage was recorded by González during a trip to Havana. He later decided to include it in Habitante, his third documentary feature film, which premieres this Wednesday, July 23, at the Cinemateca de Bogotá.
The elderly Cuban, sitting by the sea, opens the video with an introduction that says it all. «I am Julián, I live in Havana, and I have been fishing for 67 years. I don't feel pain, I'm in good health, I work 10 to 12 hours every day and I have a million friends and another million to meet».
His full name is Julián Andrés, named after the Feast of Saint Julian on which he was born and his maternal grandfather. He learned to survive from the age of eight, driven by necessity, like thousands of Cubans.
The need is what taught me survival. "You see, I am prepared to live in extreme conditions," he says. "I can build a house in the woods without a knife or anything. I won't lack food or water. I know how to extract what I need from nature to live."
His philosophy on money and happiness, amidst the deep economic and political crisis that the island is experiencing, is what has resonated most with those who watched the clip.
"Money is not total happiness. It is very much needed, but it is not total happiness. There are those who have money and cannot be happy. And there are those who have nothing and are happy," says Julián.
At the end of the video, as the hook drops into the water, Julián delivers the line that generated the most comments: «I just need a good love, nothing more, that's all I need».
The spectators reacted with an spontaneous literary comparison: "He is the true protagonist of The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway." Another person expressed, "I want to be part of Julián's other million friends."
Someone called it "a graphic description of true happiness" and someone else quoted Hemingway to accompany their depiction: "Now is not the time to think about what you don't have. Think about what you can do with what there is."
Habitante is the conclusion of a trilogy on the human condition that González began with Lázaro (2019), about his father's Alzheimer's, and continued with Álvaro (2022), which was awarded the Premio Luis Ospina for Best Director at the International Film Festival of Cali.
The new film brings together more than twenty years of recordings in eight countries —Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, the United States, France, Spain, India, and China— and is structured into four narrative blocks featuring around 25 stories. For now, the testimony of the Cuban elder is one of the most discussed on social media.
The Wednesday premiere at the Cinemateca de Bogotá will be accompanied by the photographic exhibition Healing Properties of Portraits, at the Museum Street within the same venue.
Julián, who has spent his entire life taking from nature what he needs to survive, is not the only Cuban for whom the sea is both a livelihood, an identity, and a refuge against a reality that rarely gives back what they deserve.
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