QUEEN OF CONDOMS

A German student falls in love with a Cuban captain and follows him to the Caribbean. Knowing little about sex, she becomes the official sex educator of Castro's revolution. A film about potent female agitators, staunch machos and Carribean love life

Soon after the Cuban revolution, Monika Krause, a citizen of the GDR, falls in love with Jesús Jimenez, a Cuban captain who has come to Rostock to pick up a freight ship. The 20-year-old student follows her captain to Cuba and, once there, soon starts to mix in the highest circles of the revolution. She becomes Fidel Castro's translator. A few years later, she gains nationwide fame in her capacity of state sex educator with a radio and TV programme of her own. In this land where macho rules, the emancipated German fights for the right of a woman to her own body, sexual gratification, contraception and to have an abortion. As a taboo-breaker, she becomes known overnight throughout the country as la Reina del Condón - Queen of Condoms: loved and adored by some, hated and feared by others. When in the mid-eighties Monika Krause, in spite of having been banned from speaking publicly, starts to fight against the exclusion of homosexuals, which is taking place on a massive scale, she increasingly gets into conflict with the regime. When in 1989 the wall in Berlin comes down, she runs away with her two sons, back to Germany.

Fifteen years later: Monika Krause still devotes a large part of her life to Cuba. She writes books about Cuba and gives lectures. She neither can nor wants to return to Cuba again. Because even now she is occasionally woken up by nightmares.

Monika Krause will be 65 next year. As a birthday present, her two sons are travelling to Cuba. They visit old friends of Monica's, her former work colleagues, and they chat with the people in the streets. Does Cuba still remember its Reina del Condón? - And what are her son's and husband's memories of the «Queen of Condoms»? Via the journey of Daniel and Dyctis the spectator gradually finds out about the extraordinary life of Monika Krause.

A film about the rise and fall of a family and its ideals. A film about a potent female agitator, staunch machos and Caribbean love life.