Trailer
Plot summary
Havana, 1948. Chico, a piano player chasing big dreams, and his best friend Ramón work the bars of a city under the Batista regime. A night out with two American tourists takes them to a club where Chico hears Rita sing with the band and is drawn to her at once. The Tropicana Club is short a pianist for a show Rita is in, and Chico takes the job. He and Rita go out together, ride a motorcycle, and he plays bebop for her in an empty bar. Juana, Chico's former girlfriend, walks in the next day and fights with Rita. Chico asks Ramón to talk Rita into singing with him in a radio contest, and the two win a month at the Hotel Nacional. A businessman named Ron offers Rita a trip to New York.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Chico & Rita (2010)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Chico and Rita won the Goya Award for Best Animated Film at the 25th Goya Awards, and its nomination for Best Animated Feature at the 84th Academy Awards was the first ever for a Spanish full-length animated film.
- To recreate 1940s Havana, the filmmakers used an archive the Havana city government had assembled to help with street repairs: photographs of every street corner in Havana since 1949, which conveyed the look and mood of the era.
- The film's composer, the Cuban pianist and bandleader Bebo Valdés, was living in obscurity in Stockholm until Fernando Trueba's earlier film Calle 54 reintroduced his playing to an international audience. Trueba then produced Valdés's Grammy-winning album Lagrimas Negras with flamenco singer Diego el Cigala.
- Chico & Rita was Javier Mariscal's first animated feature film as designer, and the idea to make an animated feature came from one of the animated pop promos he made for Fernando Trueba's Calle 54 Records, La Negra Tomasa by Cuban musician Compay Segundo.
