La reina del condón

Soon after the Cuban revolution young german Monika Krause falls in love with Jesús Jiménez, a Cuban captain who has come to Rostock to pick up a merchant ship. The 20-year-old sails to Cuba with him and, once there, soon starts to mix in the highest circles of the revolution. She works for the Federation of Cuban Women and translates for Fidel Castro. A few years later she gains nationwide fame in her capacity as state sex educator, with radio and TV programmes of her own. In this land of deeply rooted machismo, the emancipated German fights for the right of women to sexual gratification, contraception and abortion. As a taboo-breaker, she becomes known overnight throughout the land as the «Reina del Condón» – the Queen of the Condom, loved and adored by some, hated and feared by others. Monika’s husband, Jesús, finds it increasingly hard to come to terms with his wife’s activities, and the marriage breaks down. When, in the mid-1980s, Monika Krause defies a ban on public speaking and starts campaigning against the wholesale marginalisation of homosexuals, she increasingly comes into conflict with the regime. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall, she flees Cuba with her two sons at the end of 1990 and returns to Germany. Fifteen years later, and Monika Krause still devotes a large part of her life to Cuba, writing books about her former home and giving lectures. She neither can nor wants to return to the island. However, by way of marking her 65th birthday, her sons Daniel and Dictys travel back there on her behalf. They visit old her friends and former work colleagues and chat to people in the street: does Cuba still remember its Reina del Condón? The audience gradually learns about the extraordinary life of Monika Krause through the researches of her sons. This is a film about the rise and fall of a family and its ideals. A film about a tireless campaigner, about diehard machismo and about Caribbean love life.