BreakThrough News Announces 'Cuba After Castro' Documentary Premiere

As President Trump threatens to "take" Cuba and a US oil blockade pushes the island into nationwide blackouts, BreakThrough News is releasing "Cuba After Castro," a documentary built around the only interview Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel has ever given to a US journalist.

That interview was conducted by journalist and filmmaker Abby Martin, whose prior work on Cuba and Latin America has placed her among the few American journalists with sustained access to the island. Martin directed "Gaza Fights for Freedom" and runs The Empire Files; she visited Cuba in 2022 alongside BreakThrough News editor-in-chief Benjamin Samuel Becker. Given the near-total breakdown in US-Cuba relations, Díaz-Canel agreeing to sit with a US journalist at all is the documentary's central achievement.

The backdrop is as stark as it gets. Trump has imposed an oil blockade that severed shipments from Venezuela and threatened tariffs against Mexico's state-owned Pemex and any other country supplying the island with fuel. As of mid-March, Díaz-Canel confirmed Cuba had received no petroleum deliveries for three months. The resulting power crisis brought the national grid to a complete collapse, plunging Havana and cities across the island into darkness. Trump told reporters in March that "whether I free it, take it, I think, I could do anything I want with it," while his administration has made Díaz-Canel's removal a stated negotiating condition.

"Cuba After Castro" positions itself squarely against that wave of hostile framing. BreakThrough News describes the film as revealing "a portrait of an island, and its leader, who we are told to hate but know so little about." Where most US coverage of Díaz-Canel now centers on regime-change scenarios and Castro-family succession speculation, Martin's documentary gives the Cuban president direct access to an American audience for the first time.

The film premieres theatrically April 16 in New York City before becoming available on YouTube on April 30. Screenings can be found and booked at CubaAfterCastro.com.

With Trump musing publicly about Cuba's fate in near-weekly press appearances, and Díaz-Canel receiving US Congress members Pramila Jayapal and Jonathan Jackson in Havana as recently as April 6, the documentary lands at a moment when the question of what Cuba actually is, and who leads it, carries stakes well beyond the usual documentary audience.