Blue Heart (2021), an independent production shot in Cuba, is the most inventive and original Cuban film since the great classics of the 1960s.

Director Miguel Coyula, 46, engages in a dialogue with Tomás Gutiérrez Alea's Memories of Underdevelopment (1968). He builds a bridge between the intellectuals of the romantic stage of the Castro Revolution and the young generation of protest artists, who have adopted as their anthem the song "Patria y Vida" (Homeland and Life), taken up in the popular demonstrations #11J. Prominent figures of the intermediate generation, such as filmmaker Fernando Pérez and, later on, the musicians of the punk/rock band Porno para Ricardo, are also part of the cast of Blue Heart.

Miguel Coyula is a magnificent creator of forms, combining avant-garde experimentation with a love of popular genres. Blue Heart is part science fiction, part thriller, and also borrows from animation. This hybridity produces constant surprises and new sensations. Humor tempers the tragedy of situations where hallucination springs from the everyday. The logic of collage dominates the insertion of newsreel or documentary excerpts.

However, each image is processed and transformed in the computer, a tool as valuable as the camera for the author: camera-brush and screen canvas for a brilliant visual artist. The invention of the mise-en-scène and the dazzling work on the image immerse us in a vision of Havana out of the ordinary. The protagonists are possessed, and driven by superior forces.

The message is decidedly modern and iconoclastic, as Blue Heart attacks the mythology of the "new man" heralded by the Cuban Revolution. Coyula imagines the regime resorting to genetic manipulation to achieve this goal, with results as disappointing as Fidel Castro's experiments with dairy cows or agriculture. However, Coyula's argument is universal: science now promises the happiness of humanity and the salvation of the planet, even if it sometimes involves taking intrusive initiatives, both in bodies and mentalities.

In my opinion, Blue Heart is one of the most exciting revelations of 21st century cinema.