For the protagonists of Luis Alejandro Yero’s Calls from Moscow, the Russian capital was a place of intense silence and isolation on the eve of the invasion of Ukraine: almost a ghost town. “Here nothing happens,” says one of the four Cubans, recently exiled queer men, who form the focus of this bold first feature film, shot just weeks before the start of the war. Undocumented, unable to speak Russian and facing the brunt of the Kremlin’s anti-LGBTQ laws, the men’s decision to abandon their homes lays bare Cubans’ desperate search for a more promising future.