Fidel Castro, president of Communist Cuba, is one of the most outstanding and controversial leaders of our time. Now aged 77, he has been the leader of Ciba's revolutionary government for 44 years.

Estelle Bravo's film documents Fidel's life from his boyhood on his parents' farm, his days as a radical student leader, his 4 years leading a guerilla army in the mountains of Cuba, and then his leadership of the Cuban revolutionary process since 1959. Interview material with Fidel contains both the poignant - where he discusses his personal/political relationship with Che Guevara - and the comic as he relates how he almost accidentally shot Soviet leader Nikita Kruschev.

Yet this is much more than a personal biography. The film combines archive documentary footage and interview material with friends, allies and opponents - inserting the story of one man into a history of modern Cuba. It also deals with crucial moments in world history such as the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, and Cuba's key role in the downfall of South Africa's apartheid regime.

Estelle Bravo was born in New York but has spent most of the last 40 years living in Cuba. Fidel is the latest of a number of documentary films she has made about her adopted home.