Cuba is currently facing its worst economic crisis in modern history. Frequent and severe power outages, including a total blackout this week, along with shortages of food, water, and medicine, and increased political repression, have forced many Cubans to seek a future beyond national borders. These challenges, which intensified after the historic protests on July 11, 2021, have made life on the island increasingly untenable, leading to the largest exodus in its history. Since 2022, over 850,000 Cubans have migrated to the United States, resulting in an 18% decline in the island's population. In this context, the question of what defines Cuban cinema today has become more urgent than ever.

Despite severe censorship at home, Cuban cinema has paradoxically entered a period of remarkable creative flourishing amid scarcity, political upheaval, and displacement. A new wave of filmmakers is gaining international acclaim for their bold and innovative work. Films like Tundra, Abisal, Mafifa, In a Whisper, and many others have been celebrated at major festivals and universities abroad, even though they remain inaccessible within Cuba.

In curating Cuban Cinema Without Borders, I tried to capture the diversity of these voices. The films in this series reflect a “Greater Cuba,” one that is no longer bound by geography but stretches globally. These twenty-five pieces comprise experimental, documentary, fictional, and hybrid films made between 2016 and the current year, as well as recent restorations. Through their contextual, temporal, and discursive differences, they also articulate a new sense of cubanía or practice of "being Cuban,” as José Muñoz explained, that is continually reconstituted through cultural performance, memory, and affect, particularly for those living in exile or navigating multiple identities.

Muñoz, a Cuban-American himself, positioned cubanía as a form of cultural resilience and self-making that emerges through the disidentificatory practices of queers of color and other minoritarian subjects. His conceptualization is very useful because it challenges static ideas of nationhood by framing Cuban identity as enacted and negotiated rather than purely inherited or defined by geopolitical boundaries. The similarities and differences between all of these pieces created over the last decade also provide a glimpse of the pedagogies of resistance (as coined by Cuban critic Dean Luis Reyes) of filmmakers grappling with both the legacies of state repression and the possibilities of reimagining their cubanía from the outside the nation’s physical and ideological confines.

Most filmmakers in this showcase have left the island in recent years after building successful careers in Cuba. Many are now based in Spain or the U.S. East Coast, while others have settled in less traditional hubs like Portugal and Brazil. These shifts reflect a growing fluidity and multi-locality in their work, diverging from the typical Cuban migration to cities like Miami and New York. Reasons for their displacement range from seeking better opportunities and family reunification to escaping political repression and the precarious conditions imposed by the regime. Under these circumstances, as philosopher Judith Butler notes, those rendered "precarious" lack social and political protection, leaving their lives more vulnerable to violence and neglect.

From Ana López's 1993 concept of a "Greater Cuba," which recognized the significant contributions of exiled Cuban filmmakers in the U.S., to the diverse migratory patterns of today's creators, the nation’s cinematic landscape has only grown more porous and fluid. In the uncertainty of our present, we carry our cubanía to unexpected corners of the world. Even abroad, our precarious existence as minoritarian filmmakers, curators, and scholars operating on the fringes of state power persists, highlighting that displacement does not dissolve our challenges but reshapes them.

But I want to see that minoritarian condition and the resistance to assimilation that often goes alongside the adoption of “accented” ways of making cinema as a positive factor that has instigated the maturity of today’s Cuban productions: the disconnection from the patriarchal flux of power and resources that the Cuban state provided since the 60s to films and creators complicit in the reproduction of its ideology. As noted by Zaira Zarza in 2015, an increasing number of Cuban filmmakers are now “experiencing the agency of filmmaking without the burden of representations linked to the nation-state” (173). This push for greater autonomy has deep roots in Cuban cinema’s history but reached a critical turning point in the new millennium with the rise of independent production.

Over the past decade, much of this film production has occurred outside of Cuba’s official film industry – ICAIC – and without direct support from the state. Although the legal recognition of independent audiovisual entities in 2019 marked a step forward after years of negotiations, that apparent victory did not guarantee true artistic freedom and autonomy. Instead, it has served to illustrate the limits of state tolerance, as seen in the increase in censorship and the dismantling of critical spaces for new emerging voices, such as the Muestra Joven, which for twenty years was not only an exhibition possibility but also a training space for most contemporary filmmakers.

Even other achievements, such as the creation of the Fund for the Promotion of Cuban Cinema, have been criticized by the Assembly of Cuban Filmmakers as mere pretenses of real support. The Assembly has repeatedly condemned the Fund’s lack of true independence, the manipulation of its oversight mechanisms, and its refusal to screen films like the ones you will see here in national theaters, as well as the need for us to have a film law. Since its formal establishment in 2023 – after years of heated debates between 2013 and 2016 – this independent group has advocated for a cinema free of censorship and exclusion. The Assembly itself has become a symbol of the growing archipelagic network of Cuban filmmakers, connecting and empowering creators in the diaspora through digital platforms such as its WhatsApp channel.

One of the most significant departures from the post-revolutionary canon—where directors like Santiago Álvarez and Tomás Gutiérrez Alea created films closely aligned with the revolutionary ethos through the state-funded ICAIC—lies in the decentralization that now defines contemporary Cuban cinema, in contrast to what Michael Chanan described as the early cinema’s role as “cultural statecraft” tied to the revolution's utopian goals. Today’s most radical works are produced outside of state institutions, driven by self-funded initiatives and international cooperation. This decentralization has broadened the spectrum of voices within Cuban cinema, empowering historically marginalized perspectives—including those of women, queer individuals, and Afro-Cuban filmmakers—that were previously constrained by the state’s cultural apparatus. Consequently, the notion of Cuban cinema has been radically redefined, shifting from a state-centered national project to a constellation of transnational narratives that expand Cuban imaginaries across borders, languages, and the intersection of multiple identities.

Contemporary Cuban filmmakers are moving away from the desire to express a collective national identity or ideology. This shift is evident not only in modes of production but also in the film's narrative focus and style. Instead, they are turning to first-person narratives that prioritize micro-histories rather than overarching, grand narratives. This shift doesn’t signify an abandonment of social critique; rather, it emerges through personal, intimate, and emotional perspectives, offering a nuanced portrayal of Cuban lives through diverse positionalities as an“identity in difference”, paraphrasing Stuart Hall’s analysis of Caribbean cultural identity.

This new wave of filmmakers deliberately breaks away from the legacies of neo-realism, propaganda, and any adherence to a historical “truth” shaped by the ideological frameworks of a totalitarian regime. Positioned on the periphery of the “national,” their works produce a counter-archival gaze that challenges the revolutionary epic and its historiography, shaping what I see as a more tangible stateless cinema—a concept that goes beyond the “independent” label, which often implies market autonomy, funding sources, or creative freedom.

Stateless cinema emerges from a condition unbound by—and actively resisting—the hegemonic structures of the nation-state, producing narratives that remain in dialogue with their origins while refusing to conform to imposed identity categories from either the homeland or host nation. It intertwines with an exilic subjectivity that is not just physical but also ideological, as a structure of feeling—a refusal to inhabit predefined national identities. I prefer the term stateless because it reflects the precarious existence of many of these films and creators, unlike the term independent, which can suggest an illusion of autonomy.

This turn towards statelessness stems first from a politics of refusal against the Cuban state’s necropolitical control, and secondly, from the difficulties faced by displaced filmmakers in securing funding or integrating into new film landscapes. Even those who remain on the island, navigating the unstable ground of cultural dislocation, embody a form of stateless cinema. In essence, this stateless condition applies to any cinema that inhabits the liminal spaces of belonging neither fully here nor there.

Today’s filmmakers, whether on the island or in exile, engage with a fraught history of censorship, fear, and uncertainty by creating works that openly confront state-sanctioned narratives. This stateless condition dissolves aesthetic, geopolitical, and even epistemological boundaries that could otherwise constrain our lives and the survival of our cinema. Imagining a Cuban Cinema without Borders thus means embracing a stateless identity—a critique of political sovereignty and a positive assertion of a diasporic, decentralized cultural identity.

On that direction, revisiting Landrián’s legacy is not just an act of recovery but a way of reimagining the future. Landrián becomes our Benjaminian “angel of history,” reminding us that true progress requires confronting the past and acknowledging the suffering and injustices obscured by the facade of revolutionary rhetoric. His neglected and censored films parallel the precarious state of contemporary Cuban cinema, but also its resilience. That’s why we begin Cuban Cinema Without Borders with Ernesto Daranas’s documentary Landrián, a film driven by an archival desire, that remind us of the need for similar efforts to preserve and reclaim our histories.

In my view, the proliferation of archival revisitiation, signals a renaissance for Cuban cinema—one where social commitment is expressed not through conventional forms like expository documentaries or realist aesthetics but through more porous, hybrid formal devices. This reimagining often takes shape in symbolic forms, like the recurring motif of a mother waiting for her children or becoming fierce to protect them—imagery poignantly illustrated in many of the short films in this series and Alan González’s debut feature, Wild Woman. 

Through this approach, *cubanía* emerges not as a fixed territory, but as an identity in constant flux, subject to disidentificatory processes, like a plant that grows in the most inhospitable places. The increasing number of films that narrate from this position of otherness highlights the scale of displacement and its emotional consequences. These works are often marked by a melancholic longing for Cuba—a recurring theme in acclaimed films like A media voz (winner of the Best Documentary Feature award at IDFA) and in recent short films such as Petricor, Souvenir, La historia se escribe de noche, and my own film, Parole. This thematic shift led Cuban critic Antonio Enrique González-Rojas to identify these recent short films as emblematic of a new wave in Cuban cinema—characterized by fragmented, intimate, and existential narratives. He describes this emerging cinematic language as a "poetics of uprooting, absence, anguish, and darkness," weaving a lyrical imagery to capture the deep dislocation and existential turbulence of life in exile. This reimagining often materializes in symbolic figures, such as the recurring motif of the mother who stays up at night for her children: an imagery that runs through several shorts in this series and is also exemplified in a more insular variation in Alan González's debut film, Wild Woman.

By embracing the new geopolitical possibilities the digital era offers, cinema now reflects our evolving realities and nation-building efforts through a transnational sensibility. This refusal of isolation also serves as a returned gaze, addressing the voids left by state-sponsored homophobia, racism, censorship, and political persecution, and asserting the inclusion of those historically silenced or erased. As you will be able to see in Calls from Moscow and many of short films united under the title Voices of Displacement, there is a growing number of films exploring the complexities of exile, whose novelty lies not only in documenting the state of displacement but in their anti-essentialist practices, where loss becomes a generative force for creation. Through the use of absence and dislocation, these works redefine selfhood and belonging, turning Cuban cinema into a transnational medium for world-making—one that reconstructs identity and community beyond traditional national frameworks.

Yet, this transformative potential is not merely aesthetic but also structural, as it extends to the frequently vulnerable political economies of the filmmakers and how and where these films can be seen. This is particularly challenging for the increasing number of of Cuban filmmakers becoming stateless or in other liminal conditions. In this context, initiatives like the INSTAR Film Festival—organized by the Hannah Arendt Institute of Artivism (founded by Cuban artist Tania Bruguera)—play a crucial role. 

By providing alternative spaces for exhibition and fostering a transnational network of support, INSTAR helps safeguard the visibility and survival of these vulnerable yet vital cinematic voices. It acts not only as a screening platform but as a project that respond to a necessary historiographical drive, ensuring that a myriad of films facing a lack of freedom of speech could be shared, and discussed. Although confined to virtual screenings within Cuba due to the ongoing state censorship against initiatives of this kind, its survival demonstrates the possibilities of creating bridges that a couple years ago seemed impossible. 

Indeed, a showcase like the one you will be able to enjoy here, has been possible also thanks to INSTAR’s previous curatorial praxis as well as their current collaboration with this particular project. Luckily, this initiative is not an isolated effort. Over the past few months, similar showcases organized independently by Cuban filmmakers without any state support have emerged in diverse locations such as Mexico City (Archipiélago Fílmico, Madrid, and now here. In that regard, I hope this showcase could serve as an homage to that stateless cinema as a whole but also to many other efforts that, along the archival grain, could foster the survival of a Cuban cinema without borders. All those different appearances of such a volatile signifier demonstrate the urgency of more collective initiatives to visualize and interrogate the current temperature of a film movement that seems to trespass several borders, thus becoming a way more fleeting imago. This task involves creators, film festivals, and a more comprehensive scholarship that could approach Cuban cinematographies as an evolving and complex phenomenon instead of fetishizing a utopia that could be seen only through the aberrations of a left melancholia that turns its back to the struggles of Cuban citizens or uses as a museological souvenir, the specters of communism, as Heidi Hassan reminds us.

Beyond the collapse of utopias, this series poses fundamental questions: How does the endless exodus of Cuban people and filmmakers reshape our understanding of Cuban cinema today? Does a unified Cuban cinematic identity still exist—or did it ever? How do the films engage with the idea of "Cuban-ness" itself? Do they challenge or reinforce established cultural tropes and stereotypes associated with Cuba?

Additionally, reflecting on the lack of scholarship on Cuban-American cinema—a gap noted by Chon Noriega and other scholars—raises an important question: would it be more productive to dissect cubanía in a way that fully acknowledges the "other" elements represented by the hyphen, such as Cuban-American, Cuban-Hispano, and other diasporic identities? Finally, it might be worth asking if the newness and conditions of possibility for the survival of a cinematographic cubanía will be determined by finding a way to transcend more borders. These questions are not easily answered, but they are woven into the very texture of the films we are about to experience. Regardless of the responses we find, this series invites you to engage with a living cinematic movement and celebrate the resilience of those who continue to produce vibrant, defiant films, distilling an abundance of cubanía despite the contingency of our precarious lives.

We envision a future where images reflect our struggles and continue to cultivate a sense of community beyond the reach of silence and erasure. Imagining a borderless cinema thriving here in Berkeley, the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement, powerfully reminds us that the fight for creative and intellectual freedom is as urgent today as it was sixty years ago.