Greatest Cuban Films of All Time

A Cuban man cycles through his opinions and memories as the threat of foreign invasion intensifies and the rest of his family moves to Miami.

Traces episodes in the lives of three Cuban women, each named Lucía, from three different historical periods: the Cuban war of independence (with Spain), the 1930s, and the 1960s.

Story of two men who are opposites: one gay, the other straight; one a fierce communist, the other a fierce individualist; one suspicious, the other accepting; and how they come to love each other.

An aging actress gets trapped in the generational conflicts and political scheming of a well-known but decaying theater company and loses her career and the hope of ever loving again. Selected one of the 100 Best Latin American Films of All Times (#29), Poll of Latin American Critics (1996). Cuban entry as Best Foreign Film for Oscars, 1990. Chosen as Best Cuban Film of the decade of 1980's by National Critics Association,

Laura is a professor at a shabby, stultifying college. Her daughter, Laurita, stops going to school, wishes to move to Madagascar and quickly races through several phases. One day, she looks like a heavy-metal fan, another like a bohemian who weeps at poetry and art. Slowly, she crosses the line from ordinary adolescent confusion to intense neurosis and beyond, finally becoming so obsessed with religion and good works that she brings 10 homeless children into the cramped house she shares with her mother and grandmother.

A pious plantation owner attempts to teach Christianity to 12 of his slaves by inviting them to participate in a reenactment of the Last Supper.

A young man attempts to fight the system in an entertaining account of bureaucracy amok and the tyranny of red tape.

Both Spanish soldiers and Cuban peasants recall the bloody attack by machete-slicing Cubans in the late 19th century. The officers discuss the attack and the implications their defeat will have as they dread the review from Madrid. Soon Cuba would break away from Spain, largely with the help of William Randolph Hearst who helped to facilitate the Spanish-American War. The film also goes over the history, use and care of the machete, which came out of the sugar cane fields to become a deadly weapon of hand-to-hand combat.

In Miraflores, Cuba, the growing romance between Mario, a factory worker, and Yolanda, a schoolteacher, throws into relief the differences in their perspectives and values in Revolutionary Cuba.

1964, in the Escambray mountains: the area is infested with counter- revolutionary bands which are trying to spread terror among the population and re-establish contact with the US, CIA. The murder of a man led to a reprisal to wipe out the bandits.

Cecilia, a Cuban girl of mixed race in violent 19th-century Cuba, is raised by her mother and grandmother as a courtesan. Soon, pale-skinned Cecilia catches the eye of the estate owner's son, Leonardo. Cecilia bows to Leonardo's demands provided he agrees to shelter a wounded member of the resistance movement at his home. Leonardo's wealthy father, Cándido de Gamboa, arranges the engagement of his son to a white girl of their own class. Cecilia tries to stop the wedding with tragic results.

Young man who had lost his father falls in love with the local Chieftain's daughter, who opposes the romance. Only a miracle can save the couple's love affair and Our Lady of Charity intervenes in the name of justice.

Teresa is overwhelmed: with a husband, three young sons, a job as a crew leader in a textile factory, and volunteer commitments as cultural leader of her union. Her husband, Ramón, wants more of her attention; her feelings are mixed, wanting domestic peace, feeling responsibilities to the revolution, and wanting to control her own life beyond doing dirty dishes. They separate; he begins an affair. When he wants a reconciliation, she asks what his response would be if she'd had an affair too. "But men are different," is his reply. He's failed her test, and to hold on to independence and self-respect, she remains uncompromising and hard-edged.

On New Year's Eve, a banker and his wife invite several friends to have dinner in their apartment. Suddenly, an astrologer makes an appearance and predicts seven of the present people will die in the next weeks.

Story shows the genesis of the career and the rise of Esther the most beloved actress of most popular theater in Havana at the turn of the 19th century.

The metamorphoses of Juan Quin Quin, in turns bullfighter, guerrilla fighter and sacristan.

Javier Argüelles, an opportunistic young man from Cuban middle class, survives all kind of political changes in Havana, from 1932 to 1959, while his brother Darío is persecuted and killed because of his leftist ideas.

An aristocratic family decides to isolate themselves from the changes brought by the revolution and begin living History in reverse. A surreal voyage from Socialism to cannibalism.

A country girl working in the tobacco fields, is seduced by a city man and elopes with him to Havana. In the big city, she discovers that the man is a womanizer that has been playing with her feelings. Unable to go back to her family out of shame, she finds work singing in a night club. However, the man who dishonored her, has more evil intentions on the way.

In 1672 Cuban revolutionaries launch an uprising against the Spanish who are occupying the country.

A young woman from the country has a son from a young man of a rich family. The rich grandfather of the man, owner of the farm, takes the child away to educate him. A few years later the young woman marries a poor farmer. She rejects the child she has with him and only understands she loves him when the rival brothers fight against each other in a duel.

The conflicts of a mother who wants, beyond her means, to organize the best possible quinceañera party for her daughter.

A vampire family from Cuba is preparing for a showdown between the USA vampires and the Eastern European vampires. But with the aid of a scientist, they need a type of vaccination where they can live in daylight.

In the early years of the Cuban revolution, a young Havana student volunteers to go to a poor rural region to teach peasants how to read and write; he's sent to the Ciénega de Zapata zone, where squads of anti-Castro guerrilla operate; he happens to teach the wife of a squad leader; trouble and confrontation ensues when government militia makes the little town its operations base.

During the last days of the struggle against dictator Fulgencio Batista, a young peasant woman joins the guerrilla in the Sierra Maestra.