Related videos:
The documentary "Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara: We Are Connected", directed by Cuban filmmaker Ernesto Fundora Hernández, premieres this Wednesday on CiberCuba, broadening the scope of a biographical production that explores the life, activism, and work of the Cuban artist and political prisoner, co-founder of the Movimiento San Isidro.
The audiovisual piece, lasting one hour and 38 minutes, combines archival material, interviews, and never-before-seen footage shot between Cuba and Mexico during the period from 2016 to 2021, with a final cut completed in Mexico City in November 2025 under the label Video Vueltas Producciones.
This documentary had its world premiere on February 7, 2026 at the American Museum of the Cuban Diaspora in Miami, with additional screenings in Little Havana and broadcast on N+ Univision Miami.
Among the main figures featured in the production are Yanelys Núñez, Amaury Pacheco, and Iris Ruiz, close collaborators of Otero Alcántara in the San Isidro Movement.
The photography was handled by Carmelo Raneri and Fundora himself, the editing and post-production were done by Josafat Hernández, and the music featured contributions from Omar Sosa and Armando Gola.
The documentary portrays the emergence of the San Isidro Movement in 2018, a cultural and civic platform founded in response to the Decree 349, which criminalized independent art in Cuba, and chronicles the acts of resistance that turned Otero Alcántara into an international symbol of the struggle for freedom of expression.
The artist himself states: "When a government takes upon itself the right to dictate what is produced in cultural matters, at that moment society is lost. At that moment, society ceases to have a future."
The premiere takes place at a time of heightened international attention on his case. Otero Alcántara is serving his sentence in the maximum-security prison of Guanajay, in Artemisa, after being arrested on July 11, 2021, during the historic protests of 11J, and sentenced in June 2022 to five years in prison for "insulting national symbols, contempt, and public disorder."
Between March 30 and April 6, 2026, the artist undertook an eight-day hunger strike to denounce death threats from agents of Department 21 of State Security.
On April 24, he published an essay in The New York Times from prison, relayed to the outside through 10-minute phone calls with the assistance of the artist Coco Fusco.
Amnesty International recognizes him as a prisoner of conscience, and in 2024 he received the Rafto Prize for Human Rights, awarded by the Rafto Foundation of Norway.
The Supreme People's Court confirmed in April 2026 that his sentence will expire on July 9, 2026, rejecting a habeas corpus appeal submitted by Cubalex, which positions the premiere of the documentary just weeks before his expected release.
In the film, Otero Alcántara clearly summarizes the meaning of his struggle.
"I call on everyone to support us. I call on everyone to unite. I call on everyone to see the true Cuban reality and not to be swayed solely by the media narrative constructed by the Cuban government."
Filed under: