Cuban cinema guarantees sultry sensual tension, but also the ever-present undertone of envy. You save your own skin, and if you’re lucky, you can improve things for yourself a bit. The young lovers Manuel and Lia manage to lay their hands on the keys of the house from which Tania has been evicted: no rent in a beautiful old house in the middle of the city. But Tania also refuses to give up her home. Jirafas takes us along in this silent war largely set indoors. Havana plays a role in the stories of the waitress Lia, who seems more interested in the good life than her boyfriend Manuel does. Three beautiful twenty-somethings in a house inevitably evokes more tension than just a question of who owns it. All the pent-up irritations and sensuality reach boiling point when a hurricane approaches. Álvarez, a well-known face at IFFR, made Jirafas with a group of promising young Cuban talent from the EICTV where he teaches.