Seguridad

In her feature documentary Seguridad, Newfoundland-based filmmaker Tamara Segura—once named “Cuba’s youngest soldier” in a militia publicity stunt—portrays her troubled relationship with her father in the context of the Cuban Revolution. When Segura accepts a scholarship to study film in Canada, the move offers crucial distance from her alcoholic father. After four years, she returns to Cuba hoping to make amends. But her father’s sudden death just days after her arrival forces Segura to explore his troubled past and the role Cuba’s highly militarized system played in his downfall. Through a series of deeply personal on-camera interviews with her immediate family, Segura unearths long-held secrets that ultimately tell a story of resilience and profound love between family members. Seguridad artfully weaves a lifetime’s worth of still photographs into its intimate narrative, which offers a rare glimpse into the inner lives of Cubans in the post-revolutionary era.

The Cuba Prostitution Documentary

Meet Andrew Lindy: a man with a camera and sex on his mind. Andrew is a New Yorker who travels the world to capture beauty for various freelance jobs. Andrew chases beauty but he longs for a connection. On an assignment for ELLE magazine, Andrew travels to Cuba and brings his camera and appetite for women with him. This is a look at the lack of sexual taboo in Cuba, as well as the financial difficulties that lead to prostitution in some Cubans, for the purpose of survival.

Kuubalainen serenadi

Finnish documentary about Cuba.

Hotel Nueva Isla

In the early twentieth century, the Hotel Nueva Isla was an emblematic luxury hotel. After the Cuban Revolution, it was confiscated by the State and became a shelter for homeless people. Located in Old Havana, today it is an imposing ruin. Jorge de los Rios, a retired clerk, is one of the few residents who remain there, along with La Flaca, his lover, and Waldo, a young itinerant. As the rest leave for safer places, Jorge clings to his dilapidated home and its buried treasures, slowly digging his way through its debris. The film speaks poignantly to a lost generation who fought in the Cuban Revolution and dreamed of a better society.

Buena Vista Social Club

In this fascinating Oscar-nominated documentary, American guitarist Ry Cooder brings together a group of legendary Cuban folk musicians (some in their 90s) to record a Grammy-winning CD in their native city of Havana. The result is a spectacular compilation of concert footage from the group's gigs in Amsterdam and New York City's famed Carnegie Hall, with director Wim Wenders capturing not only the music -- but also the musicians' life stories.

1912, Voces para un silencio

Afro-Cubans played a leading role in the fight to free Cuba from Spanish domination; as part of that struggle, slavery was abolished. Nevertheless, as African descendants began to achieve a semblance of social and economic parity, the plantocracy, backed up by the US army, sought to undo their gains. Determined to resist, veterans of the Mambi army formed the Party of Independents of Color, gaining wide popular support and ultimately threatening the domination of the white Cuban rulers. Their response was savage, and 6,000 Afro-Cubans were massacred; until this film, these events have been shrouded in silence.

Dueño del tiempo

Agroecología en Cuba

100 years after the Russian revolution, the film invites us to think about agroecology as an option and a necessity in the construction of food sovereignty, taking the experience of Cuba as a world reference and inviting us to think that another type of field is possible.

La salsa Cubana

La opción cero

There are countless stories of Cubans reaching their dream destination of Florida as boat refugees. A lesser known route to the United States starts with a flight in a ramshackle plane to Guyana. Then the refugees travel to Colombia where they cross the jungle to arrive in Central America, from where they hope to reach the promised land of America—a hard and dangerous journey. Cuban filmmaker Marcel Beltrán visits them in a refugee camp in Panama, where one of the residents gives him an idea. Many people here have filmed their journey, she says, and these videos tell their real story. These jerky, shocking videos are interspersed with Beltrán’s footage of the camp, tangibly illustrating the difference between the hectic pace of the journey and the insecure life at the reception center.

Balseros

The story of Cuban refugees who risked their lives in homemade rafts to reach the United States, and what life is like for those who succeed.

Give Me Future: Major Lazer in Cuba

In the spring of 2016, global music sensation Major Lazer performed a free concert in Havana, Cuba—an unprecedented show that drew an audience of almost half a million. This concert documentary evolves into an exploration of youth culture in a country on the precipice of change.

Castro's Secret Reef

Cuba's enforced isolation has resulted in the unlikeliest of marine reserves: a huge, rambling archipelago known as Jardines de la Reina, or "Gardens of the Queen." Stretching around 140 miles along the southern coast of Cuba, it's one of the longest barrier reef systems in the world. Get an up-close look at Fidel Castro's diving playground, a forgotten ocean paradise unseen for half a century, and witness exotic species rarely seen elsewhere in the region. It's the lost jewel of the Caribbean, but how long can this pristine wilderness survive?

Guantes Sin Ring

The conflicts of female boxers in Cuba are addressed. The film tells the life stories of members of the women's boxing team, who has to face many obstacles until the official practice of that sport was finally autorized in Cuba, in December 2022.

Пылающий остров

Documentary recounting the story of the Cuban Revolution and its impact on the young people of Cuba.

Personal Che

A documentary that explores the myth behind the truth. Different people around the globe reinterpret the legend of Che Guevara at will: from the rebel living in Hong Kong fighting Chinese domination, to the German neonazi preaching revolution and the Castro-hating Cuban. Their testimonies prove that the Argentinian revolutionary's historical impact reverberates still. But like with all legends, each sees what he will, in often contradictory perspectives.

Muerte al invasor

Short documentary about Cuba's resistance to American invasion.

Cuba in Africa

The dramatic untold story of 420,000 Cubans– soldiers and teachers, doctors and nurses– who gave everything to end colonial rule and apartheid in Southern Africa.

Castro's Spies

The thrilling story of an elite group of Cuban spies sent undercover to the US in the 1990s. From their recruitment, training and eventual capture on US soil; this film peers into a secret world of false identities, love affairs and betrayal. Using never seen before footage from the Cuban Film Institute’s archive and first-hand testimony from the people at the heart of this story, Castro’s Spies gives a rare glimpse into the shadowy world of a spy – where the stakes are life and death.

El juego de Cuba

A documentary depicting Cuba/US relations through baseball.