21 – 24 March 2026
Screen Cuba celebrates Cuba’s pioneering homegrown cinema industry, looking at the achievements and challenges of the Cuban people through the decolonising lenses of their filmmakers since the 1959 revolution, and presenting films rarely screened in the UK. With a range of directors and diverse themes, it presents inspiring shorts, ground-breaking features, documentaries, and discussions with Cuban film specialists.
This is the third edition of the festival and this year celebrates resistance and love. At the ICA, Screen Cuba presents two rarely seen but now beautifully restored films direct from the Havana archives, Humberto Solás’ iconic feminist triptych Lucía (1968) and Tomás Gutierrez Alea’s 1976 masterpiece Last Supper. Both directors were central to the revolutionary cinema developed in Cuba from 1959 that spoke to and for the anti-colonial, anti-imperialist movement.
The festival aims to provide a platform for showcasing some of the best of Cuban cinema, in the face of the inhumane US blockade against the island that inhibits international distribution as well as limiting filmmaking resources. The festival also supports ICAIC in the restoration of films from its archive.
Screen Cuba celebrates Cuba’s pioneering homegrown cinema industry, looking at the achievements and challenges of the Cuban people through the decolonising lenses of their filmmakers since the 1959 revolution, and presenting films rarely screened in the UK. With a range of directors and diverse themes, it presents inspiring shorts, ground-breaking features, documentaries, and discussions with Cuban film specialists.
This is the third edition of the festival and this year celebrates resistance and love. At the ICA, Screen Cuba presents two rarely seen but now beautifully restored films direct from the Havana archives, Humberto Solás’ iconic feminist triptych Lucía (1968) and Tomás Gutierrez Alea’s 1976 masterpiece Last Supper. Both directors were central to the revolutionary cinema developed in Cuba from 1959 that spoke to and for the anti-colonial, anti-imperialist movement.
The festival aims to provide a platform for showcasing some of the best of Cuban cinema, in the face of the inhumane US blockade against the island that inhibits international distribution as well as limiting filmmaking resources. The festival also supports ICAIC in the restoration of films from its archive.
Screen Cuba is a collaboration between the Music Fund for Cuba charity, the Cuba Solidarity Campaign, the Cuban Embassy in London and the Cuban film institute ICAIC in Havana. Screenings are also taking place at the Garden Cinema, Barbican and Birkbeck University Cinema and beyond London.
More info at https://screencuba.uk
More info at https://screencuba.uk
Programme
Sunday 22 March, 2pm
Lucía
Through the dramas of three women from different classes in three different crucial historical moments, Solás explores women’s personal and political struggles in Cuba and the road ahead.
Tuesday 24 March, 6.30pm
The Last Supper
This powerful drama brings a pious sugar plantation owner in 1790s Cuba, attempting to head off an uprising by sharing his table at Easter with 12 enslaved men. A radical and sometimes surreal parable showing slavery as an economic system and championing Black resistance.
Sunday 22 March, 2pm
Lucía
Through the dramas of three women from different classes in three different crucial historical moments, Solás explores women’s personal and political struggles in Cuba and the road ahead.
Tuesday 24 March, 6.30pm
The Last Supper
This powerful drama brings a pious sugar plantation owner in 1790s Cuba, attempting to head off an uprising by sharing his table at Easter with 12 enslaved men. A radical and sometimes surreal parable showing slavery as an economic system and championing Black resistance.
no. 236848.