De Cierta Manera

“About real people, and some fictitious ones.” So reads the title card of this boundary-blurring, unclassifiable sole feature from Afro-Cuban director Sara Gómez. Blending documentary, kitchen sink drama, feminist radical cinema and romantic drama, One Way or Another offers a multi-layered portrait of revolutionary Cuba, daring in both its formal experimentation and its intersectional critique. Yolanda, a teacher of disadvantaged children in a slum in Havana’s Miraflores district, meets Mario, a laborer raised on those same streets. The pair fall in love, but are pushed apart by misunderstandings stemming from their different experiences of the world, placed at odds with one another by questions of race, class and gender. Meanwhile the streets of Havana are in a state of transition,  a city under construction, musical and in constant motion. Gómez tragically died, aged only 31, before editing was completed, but the film was finished by her collaborators. Restored by Arsenal in 2021, One Way or Another is now increasingly recognised as an essential addition to the feminist film canon. (RP)