In 1996, Cuban bandleader Juan de Marcos Gonzalez, British producer Nick Gold, and American guitarist Ry Cooder convened in Havana to produce a Cuban-Malian collaboration. When the Malians couldn’t get visas, the team turned their attention to reviving a forgotten generation of legendary son cubano musicians and formed an on-the-fly ensemble: the Buena Vista Social Club. Two decades since that fateful first session, we catch up to these master musicians, as they reflect on the magical unfolding of their lives—from humble origins to the evolution and surprising revival of their careers, all against the backdrop of Cuba’s dramatic history. Brimming with unseen concert, rehearsal, and archival footage, this film is an emotional, shimmering celebration of music’s power to transcend age, ideologies, and class, and to connect us to each other through our souls.

A bracingly honest new documentary sourced from hundreds of hours of unseen archive and all-new conversations captured during the pandemic, the film features open and frank insights from each band member plus collaborators inextricably linked to the group’s orchestral adventures. Alongside dramatic re-interpretations of their hit songs, ReOrchestrated charts the very beginning of the band’s foundations all the way through the highs and lows of their three albums to date, via landmark, full orchestra appearances at Royal Albert Hall, Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg and The London Palladium, not to mention the inevitable tensions encountered en route.