"Is That You?" is a haunting Cuban indie film that tells its story through a 14 year old girl named Lili, whose world is shaped by the abuse her father inflicts on her mother. What begins as a family drama slowly turns into something darker, showing how violence doesn't simply disappear when the abuser is gone.
The Story
The film follows 14 year old Lili who lives with her parents in rural Cuba. Her father Eduardo is an abusive man who controls every aspect of their household. He regularly restrains and humiliates his wife Alina, forbidding her from eating with the family and maintaining strict control over their daily lives. Despite witnessing this abuse, Lili loves her father deeply, as he represents the only parental figure she has ever known. She still doesn't understand the abuse her mom is going through because she is young and thinks it's normal.
Alina, trapped in this violent marriage, begins a relationship with Carlos, a family friend who witnesses Eduardo's cruelty. Their connection grows from shared sympathy into a romantic affair, but more importantly, it becomes a partnership born of desperation. Carlos is Alina's only chance of escape from her abusive situation.
The situation reaches a breaking point when Eduardo asks Carlos to accompany him on a business trip to examine leather goods. This presents the perfect opportunity for their plan. Eduardo leaves home that evening but never returns. Carlos and Alina have murdered him, though the exact details of how this happens remain deliberately unclear in the film.
When Lili discovers her father is missing, she becomes frantic with worry. Her mother appears strangely calm, which confuses and frightens Lili further. The girl believes her father's disappearance is punishment for a lie she recently told him. She had claimed that Carlos was waiting outside for her mother during a previous incident, but this was false. She only said it to deflect Eduardo's anger when he discovered she had damaged one of his photographs.
Consumed by guilt and desperate to bring her father home, Lili seeks help from Caridad, a local spiritual practitioner. The woman instructs Lili to perform specific rituals: speak to an egg as if it were her father, break eggs at each entrance to their house, and create an altar with Eduardo's photograph, a glass of water, and white flowers. Caridad tells her to have faith and her father will return.
Lili follows these instructions exactly, speaking daily to the egg and maintaining the altar. She pours her heart out to her father's photograph, expressing her love and begging for his return. Her devotion to these rituals is complete and unwavering.
Meanwhile, Alina and Carlos no longer hide their relationship. Carlos attempts to involve himself into the family by bringing gifts, including a puppy for Lili's 14th birthday. However, Lili rejects these gestures entirely. She wants her real father back, not a replacement.
As time passes, Lili begins to piece together the truth through overheard conversations and observed behavior. She learns that her mother and Carlos were responsible for Eduardo's death. They planned and carried out his murder as their means of escaping his abuse.
However, something disturbing begins happening to Lili. Instead of the loving father she remembers, her rituals seem to have awakened something darker within her. She starts speaking in Eduardo's voice, repeating his exact phrases and adopting his mannerisms. Her behavior becomes increasingly erratic and troubling.
This transformation accelerates as Lili shaves her head and begins treating her mother with the same cruelty Eduardo once displayed. She uses his words, adopts his posture, and recreates his patterns of control and abuse. The girl who desperately wanted her father to return has effectively become him.
The film reveals that Lili's rituals have succeeded, but not through supernatural means. Rather than summoning Eduardo's spirit, the ceremonies have triggered a psychological breakdown in which Lili embodies all the abusive behaviors she witnessed throughout her childhood. Years of observing her father's treatment of her mother have left deep impressions that now surface as learned behaviors.
Alina and Carlos killed Eduardo believing this would end the cycle of abuse in their household. However, they failed to account for the psychological damage Eduardo had already inflicted on his daughter. Through 14 years of daily exposure to his violence and control, Lili had internalized these patterns as normal family dynamics.
The house that was meant to become peaceful after Eduardo's death instead gains a new source of dictatorship. Lili adopts her father's abusive behaviors, not through malice but through the only model of family relationships she has ever known. The cycle of violence continues through the very person Alina and Carlos thought they were protecting.
The film concludes with the tragic irony that Lili's desperate desire to bring her father back has succeeded completely. Eduardo lives on through her words, actions, and treatment of others, demonstrating how trauma can be transmitted across generations and how the effects of abuse can outlast the abuser themselves.
My Review
This story demonstrates how abuse creates lasting psychological damage that persists even after the abuser is removed. Children who grow up witnessing domestic violence often struggle to develop healthy relationship patterns, sometimes unconsciously repeating the behaviors they observed. The film suggests that breaking cycles of abuse requires more than simply eliminating the abusive person - it demands addressing the psychological harm already inflicted.
Eduardo's influence proves more enduring than his physical presence. Through Lili's transformation, he effectively returns to continue his reign of terror. The daughter's love for her father becomes the very mechanism through which his abusive patterns survive and continues.
What makes this film particularly powerful is how it reflects real issues within Cuban society. In 2018, 4.6% of women aged 15-49 years reported that they had been subject to physical and/or sexual violence by a current or former intimate partner in the previous 12 months, though many experts believe the actual numbers are much higher due to underreporting. The Cuban government has historically been reluctant to release comprehensive domestic violence statistics, which constitutes one of the biggest limitations in analyzing and confronting violence against women.
Despite Cuba's advances in gender equality, including women holding significant positions in government and having equal access to education and healthcare, machismo has become deeply woven in Cuban society and have created barriers that perpetuate domestic abuse. This cultural machismo, which emphasizes male dominance and control, is especially pronounced in rural areas where the film is set. Machismo and the gender inequalities inherent in Cuba's patriarchal society put women in rural communities at greater vulnerability, largely due to the worse socio-economic conditions in these areas compared to urban spaces.
For viewers unfamiliar with Cuban culture, it's important to understand that Cuba is a Caribbean island nation that experienced a communist revolution in 1959. While the revolution brought improvements in healthcare, education, and women's legal rights, traditional gender roles and attitudes have proven more resistant to change. Despite government policy, and as with much of Latin America, machismo is common, and stereotypes of women continue to exist. Rural Cuba, where this story takes place, tends to be more isolated and traditional, making it harder for women like Alina to seek help or escape abusive situations.
Recent data suggests the problem of gender-based violence in Cuba may be worsening. During 2023, 89 women were victims of femicide in Cuba, and so far in 2024, 12 cases have already been documented according to activist organizations, though official media sources failed to report any of these killings or to report on femicide statistics.
The film's portrayal of a child normalizing abuse because it's all she's ever known resonates particularly strongly in a society where discussing domestic violence has long been taboo. Children like Lili often don't recognize the abuse as abnormal because they don't see other 'normal' family relationships around them. This makes the psychological realism of her transformation more chilling - she's not possessed by supernatural forces, but by very real learned behaviors that Cuban society has struggled to address effectively.
What's most disturbing about "Is That You?" is how it suggests that even when victims find the courage to fight back against their abusers, the damage may already be irreversible. The film serves as a reminder that protecting children from witnessing domestic violence is crucial, as the psychological wounds can last a lifetime and potentially spread to future generations.
This indie film moves at a very slow pace, and has alot of uncomfortable scenes that many viewers won't like, though this movie has to reach many people and domestic abuse must end.
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