Buena Vista Social Club: Adios

Named after a famous music club in Havanna that closed in the 1940s, The Buena Vista Social Club has ruled dance floors across the world with their Cuban vibes ever since the band was founded in 1997. The success story hit the cinema screens in 1999 when German director Wim Wenders released his documentary Buena Vista Social Club, for which he received an Academy Award nomination the year after.

18 years after this ground-breaking achievement comes the sequel Buena Vista Social Club: Adios, helmed by British director Lucy Walker (Waste Land). It reunites us with the remaining band members on their closing tour. We get to hear them recount the ups and downs of their remarkable careers, and reflect over their landmark contribution to the history of Cuban music.

The film ends with recordings from a series of magnificent concerts held in Havanna, and thus marks a perfect and somewhat melancholic ending to a great musical adventure. Johanne Svendsen Rognlien

Lucy Walker (b. 1970) is a prolific and well-renowned British director and producer. She is perhaps best known for Waste Land (2010), about people that live off a gigantic waste dump in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Walker has directed a number of documentaries, including many shorts, from countries such as Cuba, Mongolia, Japan and the U.S., covering a variety of themes.