I Am Cuba (Criterion) 04/24 Blu-ray (Rental)

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. BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES 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