With Donald Trump set to return to power, I Am Cuba may be a difficult watch, especially for those unwilling to surrender their freedom to a self-proclaimed “strongman.”

| Nov 13, 2024

Invigorating cinema.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 26, 2024

One of the most extraordinary pieces of revolutionary propaganda ever produced, as vibrant and vital as anything the Soviets released during the silent era.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Apr 24, 2024

Within the framework of its narrative limitations, it is a radical film in which Kalatozov, supported by an aesthetic that consistently elevates its formal properties, narrates a sober anthology, truthful in its propaganda model. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 7/10 | Mar 10, 2024

I Am Cuba is more than a picturesque travelogue. It is a pulsating ethnographic profile, an excavation of sorts, uncovering and unleashing its discoveries with a sweeping scope.

| Nov 16, 2023

Mikhail Kalatozov's astonishing portrait of Cuba transcends its propaganda origins and deserves a more prominent place in cinema history.

| Original Score: 10/10 | Feb 29, 2020

I Am Cuba is an ode to a place that never existed and yet one that continues to exist. The Cuba it depicts may be an imagined one, but it's one we're continuing to imagine today.

| Feb 24, 2020

The recent 4K restoration by Milestone Film & Video is a revelation, nothing less than a singular, definitive cinematic experience.

| Original Score: 10/10 | Dec 27, 2018

From the swaying palm trees in the beginning credits to the final victory march, the temperament of the revolution in I Am Cuba is uniformly passionate and determined.

| Sep 26, 2017

One of the most technically impressive films of its time, and one of the most politically naive.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Mar 2, 2011

A work of dazzling cinematographic invention that still has the ability to astound.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 20, 2009

... an epic revolutionary art movie of socialist ideals that opens in the decadence of Batista’s Cuba and ends with the intoxication of righteous uprising against the capitalist oppressors.

| Feb 5, 2008

Being suppressed by those who wanted [I Am Cuba] made in the first place is a vindication of sorts. Mere propaganda only reinforces the status quo. True art is revolutionary.

| Original Score: 9/10 | Dec 12, 2007

This loony, quasi-masterpiece is one of the great jagged edges of film history.

| Nov 29, 2007

visual impressions that will forever remain embedded in your mind's eye%u2014just as much as Picasso's La Guernica communicates the horrors of war

| Original Score: A | Nov 23, 2007

a chest-thumping source of pride for the Soviet government, full of inciting imagery, enormous filmmaking prowess and the flavor of revolution

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 20, 2007

Considering the power of the film today, it's hard to believe it fared poorly when audiences finally saw it.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 19, 2007

I Am Cuba is a cinephile's wet dream, a collage of Herculean feats of technical wizardry that would be easy to dismiss if it wasn't so humane.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Nov 17, 2007

Some of the most exhilarating camera movements and most luscious black-and-white cinematography you'll ever see inhabit this singular, delirious 141-minute communist propaganda epic.

| Sep 17, 2007

The result is a technically astonishing mixture of optimistic Stalinist kitsch, agitprop and the epic Soviet style of the Twenties.

| Jan 27, 2007