Jankee

The year is 2016. Yamel Thompson, a 23-year-old Mexican film student at Cuba’s EICTV, is strolling along a pier when she catches the gaze of Jans, an 18-year-old fisherman. “I liked the way he looked at me,” she confides at the beginning of her film. It is that gaze that would become, years later, the true subject of this documentary—beyond the country, the sea, the fishing boats, the love story, or even Jans himself. Back then, like the rest of the world, Yamel had no way of knowing that the #MeToo movement was about to shake the foundations of the cinema industry, or that ideas such as consent, objectification, and “gaze” would go on to reshape how we represent others—and how we love.

From that first glance, Yamel began filming Jans. She never asked his permission; it was a game between them. The camera gave her power—it granted her access to his most intimate spaces, filming him in the shower, on the bed, even when he was sulking. It also became a way for them to speak to each other, beyond words.

Today, Yamel is no longer 23. She looks back on her early days as a filmmaker with disarming clarity: “As long as I had the camera, Jans was a character.”

Anne Delseth

Jankee, 2025
The Wait, 2016
Florence, 2015