One of the biggest artistic achievements of the twentieth century. You can praise it for its fantastic black and white high contrast cinematography, or the amazing fact that the movie is always looking for the right excuse to make the camera flow -the camera is continuously moving but not just for aesthetic purposes, it helps the storytelling too- but it's the historic meaning and its approach what really makes it much more than a film, and then becomes an essay... An experience.

This is a love letter to Communism, pure propaganda. As history has prove, some milestones in art start as pure promotional assignments, like Battleship Potemkin was or the Riefenstahl documentaries financed by the German Nazis. This is the testament of the influence of Soviets in Cuba, both artistically and historically.

This film has a heart. The points that it tries to prove are legit. Batista's Cuba was corrupted and was established as a playground for Americans. Lands were sold, the peasants were mistreated, the women were cheap objects, the censorship was intense. As history also proved, communism wasn't better either and it would eventually become corrupted too. Yet, the ideas of the film remain pure and full of evoking thoughts of change.

This film is a must see. Socially speaking, belongs to a place saved for movies like The Grapes Of Wrath and The Battle of Algiers. Cinematically speaking, Eisenstein's and Tarkovski's masterpieces are just as influential as this film.