Cuban cinema, with its limited annual output, is like a raft struggling to stay afloat in the middle of a storm in the Florida straits. Each of these films, valuable in their own right, takes on the challenge of capturing the vast and complex reality of a country that can’t fit into an hour and a half. This task is also a significant challenge for such a small amount of production each year, as attempting to address the themes that arise from our reality requires a monumental effort.
In this sense, Cuban cinema, with its neo-realist DNA, is facing a debt to its culture. To get up to speed on what we Cubans have experienced in the latter half of the 20th century, we would need many more films and much more time in continuous production. Furthermore, the ability of Cuban cinema to look at itself—in other words, to reflect on the society that we’ve built, with all of its nuances—has been blocked both by the interference of the State in constructing this viewpoint as well as the decision on the part of filmmakers to find ways around the roadblocks and difficulties of life. Up until now, this ability to self-reflect has been an overdue assignment.
But, beyond what Cuban cinema is able to express, a reality that is even more intricate and uncontainable is unfolding, an exuberant and shamelessly crude reality that remains out of reach to filmmakers’ cameras and viewpoints. A story is a viewpoint that becomes a script and evolves until it reaches, in the case of cinema, the screen; but in that cinematographic reality that is so difficult to create these days, there are many unexplored areas, which is where I think Cuban cinema as we know it, or an expanded idea of what we think of as “Cuban-style” filmmaking, should plan to go in order to survive. Of course I would like this cinema to be permeated by an idea of Cuba that encompasses every context where Cuban-ness is bouncing around and reverberating. That place (perhaps it could be the metaverse a few years from now) is where the Cuba of the island and the Cuba of its different diasporas will come together, and in that swirl, Cuban cinema will grow, leave its ghetto, and become universal. Only by becoming universal will it find a niche in the market where it can compete commercially.
Much of Cuban cinema today is found tucked into directors’ folders, in files that rest before the eyes of cultural bureaucrats who, following their political agendas, have also played a role in bringing filmmaking to a crossroads. There are many unproduced projects containing ideas that may never see the light of day. It’s in these projects, which, fortunately, have been archived, where the future of present-day Cuban cinema truly lies.
Cuban cinema is full of flare films; which is to say, films that make it to festivals and, thanks to this, we are able to keep the category of “Cuban cinema” alive for the global audience. These films’ survival and ability to evolve are being constantly challenged by the dynamics of censorship, the economic crisis, and the lack of a niche in the global market. This situation forces us to rethink our perceptions about cinematographic identity and the viability of our cinema in a world that waits for no one.
Following Slavoj Žižek’s line of thinking, we could view Cuban cinema as stuck in a type of “negative dialectics.” To get unstuck, it’s not enough to stand up to restrictive forces; it must completely reconfigure the framework in which it operates. Cuban cinema also needs to find a niche in the global market. This is not just for economic reasons, but for something much more profound: the fight for artistic autonomy and creative independence. Because as long as we depend on subsidies from the government and European film funds, our cinema will remain chained to outside agendas. Economic self-sufficiency is essential to achieving true creative freedom. If Cuban cinema wants to survive and thrive, it must find a way of generating revenue to enable its creators to make a living from their work. Only then, when filmmakers can depend on income from their films, will Cuban cinema enter a new stage, with new challenges, new missions, and new goals. In the meantime, we will remain trapped in a survival mentality, selling rights for next to nothing, begging for money from European funds that, while useful, are still tied to cultural agendas that are often far from the needs and concerns of Cuban filmmakers.
At the same time, we can’t ignore that subsidies, whether from the Cuban government or international sources, have played a crucial role in the survival of Cuban cinema up until now. Without this support, many significant works would not have seen the light of day, which would have resulted in an irreparable loss for Cuban culture. Nevertheless, our dependence on these funds also carries a cost that goes beyond economics. The processes for obtaining funding and subsidies, while offering a viable alternative, is burdensome, and in many cases limits the creative freedom of filmmakers, subjecting each project to the lottery of the arts, where before a work can exist it must go through a long and arduous process of competitions, applications, and interminable waiting. Therefore the future of Cuban cinema may reside in the adoption of emerging technologies, in the mix of real and 3D imagery, in artificial intelligence tools, in animation, and all of this remixed with what cinema has already achieved. These technologies not only offer the potential to reduce production costs, they also open up new forms of expression and storytelling, enabling Cuban filmmakers to explore creative territories that seemed unreachable before. The metaverse, virtual reality, and other technological innovations could offer a refuge to our filmmakers, helping them escape the restrictions imposed by traditional infrastructures and reach global audiences without the limitations that currently bind them.
Lastly, the future of Cuban cinema will depend on our ability to transcend current limitations and adopt a translational vision that includes technology, finds its target audience, and manages to sell its films on the global market. If we achieve this, Cuban cinema will not only survive, it will evolve into a new phase where resistance is no longer the only option, and new possibilities and new pathways will open up. But to get there, we must be open to leaving behind old ways of thinking and abandoning the romantic and, paradoxically, bourgeois mentality that has dominated Cuban cinema up until now.
It’s time for Cuban cinema to stop being an art of resistance and become an art of evolution, an art that not only reflects the Cuban reality, but that also looks to the future, toward a globalized world where the stories we tell can find their place and their audience. There is one path that we already know, one that we’ve walked for years, and we know where it leads us. But there is another path, an unexplored one, full of uncertainty and challenges but also possibilities. Now more than ever, it is up to us to choose which of these paths we’ll take. Because hanging on this choice is not only the future of Cuban cinema, but also our ability to continue to dream, create, and ultimately make a living doing what we love.

Carlos Quintela is the director of the feature-length films La piscina (The Swimming Pool) (2011), La obra del siglo (The Project of the Century) (2015), and Los lobos del Este (The Wolves of the East) (2017), shown at international film festivals such as Berlin and Rotterdam and recipients of around 30 prizes, including the Lions Film Award and the Tiger Award at Rotterdam. He produced the webseries El sucesor (The Successor) (2019). Two of his video art pieces are being shown at a collective exhibition organized by Fundación Cartel Urbano in Bogotá, Colombia.