An unabashed exercise in cinema stylistics, I Am Cuba is pro-Castro / anti-Batista rhetoric dressed up in the finest clothes.
The film's four dramatic stories take place in the final days of the Batista regime; the first two illustrate the ills that led to the revolution, the third and fourth the call to arms which cut across social and economic lines.
Unreleasable to American theaters during the Cold War, I Am Cuba, through the auspices of filmmakers Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese, got a belated U.S. release in 1995 and has proved to be both a time capsule of a fading political movement and a timeless work of cinematic art.
Direction: Mikhail Kalatozov
Production: ICAIC & Mosfilm