100
Slant Magazine by Ed Gonzalez
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.
I Am Cuba (Soy Cuba)
Critic Rating
(read reviews)User Rating
- Cuba,
- Soviet Union
- 1964
- · 140m
Director
Mikhail Kalatozov
Cast
Sergio Corrieri,
Salvador Wood,
José Gallardo,
Raúl García,
Luz María Collazo,
Jean Bouise
Genre
Drama
Over four dramatic stories set in and around Havana, this 1964 anthology drama explores Cuba's transition from the totalitarian rule of the Batista regime to widespread revolution.
Stream I Am Cuba
What are critics saying?
100
San Francisco Chronicle by Edward Guthmann
Photographed in lush black and white by Sergei Urusevsky, who worked with the amazingly inventive camera operator Alexander Calzatti, "I Am Cuba" unfolds like a cinematic Olympics of complex, acrobatic camera moves.
100
The A.V. Club by Scott Tobias
I Am Cuba is still propaganda of the first order, a beautiful and sensually overwhelming tribute to the land and its people.
100
San Francisco Chronicle by G. Allen Johnson
Powered by the great Soviet director Mikhail Kalatozov ("The Cranes Are Flying") and the unmatched handheld black-and-white cinematography of Sergei Urusevsky, it is one of the most visually hypnotic films ever -- and that's not hyperbole.
100
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
It is strident, yes, and naive, too perhaps; but lyrical and passionate and visually dazzling.
100
BBC
It's a vibrant, joyous piece of technical accomplishment that's probably one of the most relentlessly innovative films you'll ever see.
100
Chicago Tribune by Michael Wilmington
It's impossible, when we watch "I Am Cuba" today, not to see some poignance in its soaring shots, sadness to its thrilling vistas. [08 Dec 1995, p.C]
100
TV Guide Magazine by Staff (Not Credited)
The film is immensely entertaining and occasionally inspiring, a delirious combination of Slavic solemnity, Latin exoticism, Communist idealism and breathtakingly beautiful images.
100
Time Out by Staff (Not Credited)
It seems reductive to call this one of cinema’s great ‘lost’ works because this is one of the great films period, taking its place in the canon with urgency since its re-emergence in the 1990s.
100
BBC by Jamie Russell
It's a vibrant, joyous piece of technical accomplishment that's probably one of the most relentlessly innovative films you'll ever see.
90
Los Angeles Times by Kevin Thomas
A great poetic epic that blends the stirring visual daring of Russia's cinema of revolution with an intoxicating Latin sensuality. [21 Jul 1995, p.F8]
89
Austin Chronicle by Marc Savlov
Audacious, thrilling, erotic (and in three languages, no less), I Am Cuba is a lost masterpiece of filmmaking finally seeing the light of day 30 years after its production.
80
The Observer (UK)
The result is a technically astonishing mixture of optimistic Stalinist kitsch, agitprop and the epic Soviet style of the Twenties.
75
San Francisco Examiner
With all that has happened to the Soviet Union, and to the dreams of the Cuban revolution, in the years since "I Am Cuba" was made, the film can't help feeling like a relic of a discarded era. But it still has power to surprise and, occasionally, to enchant.
75
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
Even its depravities and imperialist Yankee misbehavior seem quaint. But as an example of lyrical black and white filmmaking, it is still stunning.
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