Waiting for Fidel
1974 · 57m · Canada
Directed by Michael Rubbo
Genres: documentary
Tones: contemplative
A Canadian filmmaking trio travels to Cuba hoping Fidel Castro will appear in their film, and their long wait to meet him becomes a portrait of the country and of the three visitors themselves.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
It's a documentary about waiting for Fidel that never delivers Fidel—which should be boring as hell, but Rubbo's actually doing something sly with the audience's impatience, turning a failed premise into a meditation on why we wanted to meet him in the first place.
A structurally ingenious work that positions itself in the essay-film tradition while interrogating the documentary form itself; the absence becomes the film's argument, and Rubbo's restraint in never manufacturing what didn't happen places it in direct conversation with Marker and Vigo.
The key move is the decision to stay—to let the camera observe the filmmakers' own disillusionment and the texture of everyday Cuba rather than manufacture a climax—and that choice of patience over payoff transforms what could've been a gimmick into something genuinely intimate.