General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20264 min read

Viva (2015 film)

Viva is a 2015 drama film directed by Paddy Breathnach and written by Mark O'Halloran, set and filmed in Havana and performed in Spanish. It follows Jesús, a young gay hairdresser at a Havana drag club who dreams of performing, and his estranged father Ángel, a former boxer released from prison, as the two clash and slowly reconcile. An Irish-Cuban production, the film premiered at the 2015 Telluride Film Festival and was selected as Ireland's entry for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, reaching the nine-film shortlist for that category.¹^•²^•³

Key fact	Detail
Director / writer	Paddy Breathnach; screenplay by Mark O'Halloran²
Country, year, language	Ireland and Cuba, 2015, Spanish⁴
Running time	100 minutes²
Principal cast	Héctor Medina (Jesús), Jorge Perugorría (Ángel), Luis Alberto García (Mama)¹
Premiere	2015 Telluride Film Festival¹
Awards	Ireland's entry for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar; reached the nine-film shortlist³
Critical reception	Metascore 69 from 19 critic reviews; 81% on Rotten Tomatoes⁵^•⁶

Spoilers

Plot

Jesús (Héctor Medina) is an eighteen-year-old Cuban who works as a hairdresser at a Havana nightclub that showcases drag performers, earning money through hustling while dreaming of becoming a performer himself.²^•¹ At home he listens to the records his mother and grandmother left him, torch songs and romances by the great names of Latin music, or watches the boxers train next door.² Encouraged by the club's star, an aging drag queen known as Mama (Luis Alberto García), he finally takes the stage under the name Viva.¹^•⁷

During that first performance a stranger pulls him from the stage and punches him in the face: his father Ángel (Jorge Perugorría), a celebrated boxer who abandoned him as a child and has just been released from a fifteen-year prison term for killing someone in a street brawl.⁵^•² Ángel moves into the family apartment and forbids his son to have anything to do with drag performing or the drag world.⁸ As father and son clash over their opposing expectations of each other, the film becomes, in the distributor's words, a love story as the men struggle to understand one another and reconcile as a family.¹

Production

Breathnach, an Irish director whose earlier features include Ailsa (1994), I Went Down (1997), and Man About Dog (2004), first encountered Havana's drag scene as a tourist in the mid-1990s and, impressed by what he has called the scene's "raw emotional energy," returned with screenwriter Mark O'Halloran to put it on film.⁹^•⁸ The film was shot on location in Havana and directed in Spanish.³^•⁹

The production was backed by the Irish Film Board and Windmill Lane Pictures, produced by Treasure Entertainment with producers including Rebecca O'Flanagan and Robert Walpole, and photographed by Cathal Watters, with a score by Stephen Rennicks.²^•¹ Magnolia Pictures distributed the film in the United States.¹

Music and drag performance

The world of lip-synching drag queens and the emotion they create onstage is central to the story, and the film features a collection of vintage torch songs by Cuban singers including Rosita Fornés, Elena Burke, and Maggie Carlés.⁸ Critics noted that the drag depicted departs from the American ballroom tradition: the performers' clothes are modest, their gestures small, and their wigs short, and they use the songs not to show off but to interpret and make visible long-suppressed emotions.¹⁰

Reception and awards

Viva premiered at the 2015 Telluride Film Festival, where it was described as a hit, and later screened at the Sundance Film Festival 2016 and the Dublin Film Festival 2016, among other selections.¹^•² It was selected as Ireland's entry for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film for the 2016 ceremony and reached the nine-film shortlist in that category, though it was not among the final five nominees.³^•¹¹

On the review aggregator Metacritic the film holds a score of 69 out of 100, based on 19 critic reviews, classified as generally favorable.⁵ Rotten Tomatoes certified it fresh at 81 percent.⁶ Reviewers singled out the two lead performances: Kenneth Turan, then film critic of the Los Angeles Times, praised Perugorría's convincing turn as the aggressively surly Ángel, a striking contrast to his role as a seductive gay man in the 1993 Oscar-nominated Cuban film Strawberry and Chocolate, and Medina's ability to convey both Jesús's tentativeness and a strength that echoes his father's determination.⁸ Several critics observed that the story of a young man seeking acceptance from a macho father is familiar; the Los Angeles Times review concluded that nothing happens a viewer will not see coming, but that the film is deftly done, while the Miami Herald called it "Rocky" in drag and sequins, transplanted to Havana.⁸^•⁵

Release

The film was released in Spain on 13 May 2016 and in France on 6 July 2016, with Magnolia Pictures handling the United States release.²^•⁵ In Ireland it opened on 19 August 2016.¹²

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026