Cuba, 1948: Chico is a budding pianist who meets and falls in love with the talented singer Rita. Their common passion for music unites them as a couple and subsequently as stars. But their relationship doesn't work out and they both go their separate ways, meeting up sporadically as their solo careers take them to Paris and New York. When Chico is deported to revolutionary Cuba, it seems he'll never see Rita again, because Castro has banned jazz from his new society.

Spanish director Fernando Trueba and designer Javier Mariscal team up for this colorfully animated love story. The soundtrack is by one of Cuba's best musicians, Bebo Valdés. The vibrant musical worlds of Havana, New York and Paris are painstakingly reconstructed, bringing to life a world that is perfectly in tune with the rousing jazz of the period.