I Am Cuba / Soy Cuba (1964) [The Criterion Collection]

Director: Mikhail Kalatozov
Writer: Enrique Pineda Barnet, Yevgeniy Yevtushenko
Stars: Sergio Corrieri, Salvador Wood, José Gallardo

Both a landmark of radical political cinema and one of the most visually ravishing films ever made, this legendary hymn to revolution shimmers across the screen like a fever dream of rebellion. The result of an extraordinarily ambitious collaboration between the Soviet and Cuban film industries, director Mikhail Kalatozov’s I Am Cuba unfolds in four explosive vignettes that capture Cuban life on the brink of transformation, as crushing economic exploitation and inequality give way to a working-class uprising. Backed by Carlos Fariñas’s stirring score, the dazzling camera work by Sergei Urusevsky—an inspiration for generations of filmmakers to follow—gives flight to the movie’s message of liberation.

Extras:
- 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- “I Am Cuba,” the Siberian Mammoth, a 2004 documentary on the making of the film featuring key participants
- Interview from 2003 with filmmaker Martin Scorsese
- New appreciation of the film by cinematographer Bradford Young
- Trailer
- Alternate Russian-dubbed soundtrack
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by film critic Juan Antonio García Borrero