Cuba and the Cameraman

Cuba and the Cameraman (2017) is Jon Alpert's documentary that you can watch online on iFILM. For nearly half a century, the filmmaker carried his camera back to the island again and again, recording the same handful of people from youth into old age.

The story tracks three farming families and Alpert himself across forty-five years of visits. Fortunes rise and collapse, fields flourish then fail, and some neighbors leave while others are left with almost nothing. Threaded through it all are the director's personal encounters with Fidel Castro, whom he returned to meeting after meeting, watching the man who ran the country for decades slowly grow old.

Released on Netflix, the film leans not on slogans but on one quiet method: the same faces in the same places, years apart. Anyone drawn to honest documentaries about time — how it wears people down and holds them together — will sink right into it. Stream Cuba and the Cameraman (2017) online on iFILM.