Havana gets overrun by the walking dead in twisted zombie flick Juan of the Dead from Cuban indie filmmaker Alejandro Brugues.
Like its namesake Shaun of the Dead, the action-comedy centers on an unlikely slacker hero. But there's a politically charged twist: The Cuban government labels zombies as troublemaking dissidents paid by the United States to destabilize the tiny communist island.
Leader Juan (played by Alexis Diaz de Villegas) and his pals beat back hordes of flesh-eaters with time-honored weaponry including slingshots, machetes and, as seen in the clip embedded above, an enormous rocket mobile jerry-rigged from an ancient American convertible.
"It has horror, it has action and it pretty much laughs in the face of problems," 34-year-old Brugues, a graduate of Cuba's International School of Film and Television, told the BBC World Service about his movie. "It's about how we react in the face of a crisis because we've had a lot of them here over the last 50 years."
Juan of the Dead opened last month in Spain after playing at several film festivals. The movie, in Spanish with English subtitles, screens March 2 at the Guadalajara Film Festival in Mexico and March 17 at the San Diego Latino Film Festival.
