An unclaimed fortune, grown for centuries in a British bank account, becomes a potential windfall for Bernadito Castiñeiras and the residents of the tiny village of Yaragüey, Cuba. To receive his massive inheritance check, Bernadito must prove his lineage to the Castiñeiras nuns who first populated the region. In an isolated and impoverished town where many residents share the same surname, a feud breaks out between the "Castiñeiras" and "Castiñeyras" families.

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.

At a rundown bus station in rural Cuba, the line of passengers waiting just keeps getting longer. The problem is that every bus that passes by is already full. Their only hope is to wait for the station's bus to be fixed. As the disparate group settles in, relationships start forming between the passengers: Emilio, a young engineer, becomes smitten with a beautiful young woman who is en route to meet her Spanish fiancé, a blind man gets support from the others to go to the head of the line. Frustration and disorder reign when the one bus brakes down and no one can leave. Resigned to working together, the group magically transforms the station into a beautiful place where no one wants to leave.

Faced with the emptiness and lack of rational explanation for many of the problems of the contemporary world, it sometimes seems that the only solution is to take refuge in the instincts ... and instincts lead us to sex. At least this is the exit that find the protagonists of this story: sex as a shock to stay alive, the manipulation of others as a way to ward off impotence and reaffirm their personalities torn by loneliness. But the result is ephemeral and the attempt has unforeseen consequences.

In a reinterpretation of Madame Bovary set on contemporary Mexico City, Emilia, a middle class housewife, tries to deal with the monotony of her life. One day, she loses the two things which makes everything beareable: her lover and her credit card.

A chess columnist ends in prison when one of his columns is mistakenly seen as a subversive attack. From there he invents a game of war and strategy and a cellmate who escapes uses it initiating a real revolution.

Determined not to simply get married, start a family, and grow old like the rest of the girls in her town, an aspiring Cuban diva sets out to launch a career as a singer.

After the death of don Lucio, his widow Eloísa asks one of her neighbours to use the latter's house in order to hold the dead man's wake, since Eloísa's own house is too small for that. From then on, a series of strange happenings take place during a single day.

1925. José Raúl Capablanca, a famous Cuban chess player and employee of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, arrives in Moscow for an international chess tournament. The trip, taking place under Machado's dictatorship, casts doubt on his future in this position. The film shows Capablanca's dramatic matches with Lasker, Tartakower, and Bogolubov, his tragic love for Bolshoi Theatre ballerina Sasha Mozhaeva, and a simultaneous game in which he lost to the very young Mikhail Botvinnik.