Fidel Castro: L'enfance d'un chef (2005)

Fidel Castro was born in 1926. He was the illegitimate son of a wealthy farmer and a housemaid. At the age of six, he was expelled from the family estate. He attended various schools where he invariably misbehaved before transferring to the posh Colegio de Belen in Havana. He later studied law at University of Havana where he became an ardent leftist activist. From then on he was single-minded in ousting Presidents Grau and Batista from power. He first failed (the attack of his clandestine group on the Moncada Barracks was a failure) but at the end of a long fight managed to win the victory. He became the leader of Cuba and declared himself in 1962 "Marxist-Leninist until death." But was he the great idealistic revolutionary he appeared to be or did he rise to power through opportunism, lies and manipulation? And was it worthy of a man who had fought tyrannical power to become a tyrant himself? This is the question asked by Daniel Leconte in this highly controversial documentary.