Fidel Castro’s Daughter Reflects On Cuba’s Future At Miami Film Fest

For decade upon decade, many Cuban exiles have prayed for the downfall of the island’s communist government, established in the 1959 coup led by “comandante” Fidel Castro. Remarkably, among the foremost critics of Cuba’s single-party despotic rule is one of Castro’s own daughters, Alina Fernández Revuelta.

Fernández Revuelta escaped Cuba in 1993 with the aid of a disguise and forged identity papers. Ever since, she has been a strong advocate for the kind of liberties denied Cuban citizens under the reign of her father and his successors. The documentary Revolution’s Daughter, which held its world premiere Friday night at the Miami Film Festival, explores the experience of Fernández Revuelta and other emigres who left Cuba behind physically but not emotionally.

“We’ve been a bizarre experiment,” Fernández Revuelta said of Cuba during a Q&A after the premiere. “We’ve been undergoing 67 years of ‘building the revolution,’ which is absurd… because ‘revolution’ is a short moment in history. I think about what the French would have done if their revolution lasted 67 years. Nobody in France would have a head. So we are a phenomenon. We are something indescribable. We are absurd.”

Revolution’s Daughter is produced and directed by Thaddeus D. Matula and produced by John Martinez O’Felan, Joe Lamy, Allen Gilmer, and Javier Gonzalez. Fernández Revuelta serves as an executive producer.

Introducing the film, Matula told the packed audience at the Koubek Center, “Alina I had met a number of years ago and when the opportunity came along for a documentary to be done about her, she didn’t want to do it. But she was like, ‘I’ll do it if Thaddeus is doing it. And when that kind of a challenge or vote of confidence happens, then you had to do it.”

“Of course I asked for you specifically,” Fernández Revuelta told Matula on stage. “You’re a genius. Everybody knows that.”

The filmmaker said he consulted with his protagonist on the focus of the documentary.

“I listened to Alina. I was like, ‘What do you want this film to be?’” Matula recalled. “And she said very much exactly what she says in the film: ‘It’s not just about me. It’s not one voice, it’s about all of these voices.’”

Among the other voices in the documentary are fellow Cuban emigres, including singer Gloria Estefan, poet and art critic Ricardo Pau-Llosa, artist José Bedia, the late scholar and artist Margarita Cano, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Nilo Cruz, and actor-comedian Bonco Quiñongo. Each of them reflects on the richness of Cuban culture and the lost potential for the country as it slid into political repression under the rule of Fernández Revuelta’s father.

The documentary premieres at a pivotal moment for the Cuban government which is perhaps closer to falling than at any time since 1959.

“[T]he country’s economy is in free fall, its electric grid is failing, millions of its citizens have left and the Cuban government is facing off against perhaps its most menacing foe: President Trump,” the New York Times reported in February. “Mr. Trump has closed off Cuba’s access to oil shipments, helped cripple its vital tourism industry and declared that Cuba’s government is ‘going down for the count.’”

A critical development came in early January when the Trump administration seized Venezuela’s socialist strongman Nicolás Maduro whose government had been propping up Cuba with vitally needed oil shipments. With that supply since cut off, Cuba has entered crisis mode, lacking energy sources to power the electric grid. (Earlier this month, the Trump administration allowed a Russian oil tanker to reach Matanzas, Cuba, but its cargo would only keep the country fueled for a few weeks at best).

Fernández Revuelta offered praise for a member of Trump’s cabinet – Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Marco Rubio, whose parents were born in Cuba and immigrated to the U.S. a few years before the Castro-led revolution.

“It’s the first time that somebody in an administration really pays attention to what’s going on in Cuba. I think we owe that to Marco Rubio, obviously,” Fernández Revuelta commented. “It’s a bizarre opportunity and the situation in Cuba is more exposed right now because we have internet, we have telephone; we pay for that from here [in the U.S.], of course, but what’s going on in Cuba is well known. It’s impossible to hide. So, a lot of people are more conscious of what’s going on there, and we need to keep praying the message.”

Revolution’s Daughter will screen again at the Miami Film Festival next Saturday, April 18 and from there will play at other film festivals in the U.S. and around the world. Producer/executive producer Allen Gilmer revealed he’s at work on a fictionalized telling of Fernández Revuelta’s story and at the Q&A he introduced two actresses who will play Castro’s daughter in the upcoming film.

“We have a biopic and then I thought that the documentary touch was one in which we really got the heartfelt story of what Cuba really meant, rather than just a story of a person that was leaving, that left Cuba,” Gilmer explained. “And there’s no more of an American story than the Cuban diaspora in the United States. If you were to take just the GDP that it created and the artistic achievements and all the arts and put them back into Cuba, Cuba would be the most successful country in Latin America, not only Latin America, probably all of America at this point.”