In 1979 Cuba, flamboyant gay artist Diego attempts to seduce straitlaced David, an idealistic young communist, and fails dismally. But David conspires to be "friends" with Diego so he can monitor the artist's subversive life for the state. As Diego and David discuss politics, individuality and personal expression in Castro's Cuba, a genuine friendship develops between the two.

During the 'Special Period', the members of a funeral procession cross paths with truckdrivers who have to take the same route, and begin to talk about God and the world. They discover that life for both groups has many similarities, as well as a lot of differences.

A pious plantation owner attempts to teach Christianity to 12 of his slaves by inviting them to participate in a reenactment of the Last Supper.

After the father of Marga’s unborn child dies, the young woman loses all hope, until she meets a dashing, handsome gentleman who just might be the man of her dreams -- aside from the fact that he happens to be gay…

Walter, an aspiring musician from Madrid, has a lot of troubles. After finding a videotape, he learns something which will alter his whole life, and put his Madrid problems on hold. In the tape, a Cuban woman confesses to being his mother. She is waiting for him in Havana. Walter goes to Havana to see his mother. There, the plot thickens with the addition of the mother's daughter, and a Spanish airline crew member, who round out the quartet.

Mercedes and Pedro, Cuban producers and screenwriters, travel to Spain to close an agreement with Alberto, a Spanish producer. Together, they try to make a film about Cuban reality. A movie about those who leave the island, those who return, but also those who still want to leave but cannot. A simple idea that will slowly become more complicated because Spaniards and Cubans have a very different point of view on this reality.

Pioneering Spanish filmmaker, actress and producer Margarita Alexandre (1923-2015) reminisces about her life and career during a trip to Cuba, where she worked during the early years of the Cuban Revolution.

In Havana in the nineteen sixties, there were 140 movie theaters. Only a dozen remain today. For ten years, the cinema industry was a pillar of the Cuban Revolution, but the regime’s hardening and the economic recession precipitated its decline. Fifty years later, only a dozen movie theaters are still running in Havana, while a new generation of bold filmmakers struggles for the very existence of Cuban cinema. In the Heat of the Cold Years tells the story of Revolutionary Cuban cinema through the memories of a choral of elder filmmakers, such as Luciano Castillo, the director of the national film archives, as he scrambles for the preservation of this crumbling cultural legacy, and through a group of young Cuban filmmakers struggling to make their first feature film.

Jose Luis, a young boy with aspirations to become a scriptwriter and director of cinema, is dazzled on having known the beautiful Sissy. To impress her, he appears as the director who looks for a not professional actress. She, that the whole life has dreamed of being 'discovered' but that it is not naive with men, pretends not to be interested. They begin a relationship in wich both are not as they wanted to be.