Roberto Monticello is broke. A bank account, an apartment, what little possession he has he contributes to bringing humanitarian aid and attention to the suffering of Cubans at the expense of his freedom.

“I don’t have any desires to be a martyr,” the dissident filmmaker told me at a clandestine location in New York on the eve of the premier of his documentary film Looking for Cuba.

“This film is not about politics; this is about humanitarianism, it’s about helping 11 million people who have nothing,” Monticello said.

Filmed nearly three years ago in Havana and the United States, the 50 minute documentary was directed by journalist Jim Ryerson and will make its debut at the Queens International Film Festival on Wednesday.

Monticello, who is the producer, met Ryerson an Havana Film Festival and the pair began working on a documentary called Musica Feminina, about female music groups in Cuba. The project was abandoned to create Looking for Cuba because the effects of the US Government’s 40 year old embargo against Cuba was devastating Cubans at every level. Restrictions on flying to island is limited to once every three years for immediate family. Sending money is next to impossible and receiving medicine require clandestine shenanigans.
“People are eating because they have ration cards but there is malnutrition which is affecting their bodies and minds,” Monticello said. “A Cuban does not know what a grape taste like.”

In the documentary ordinary Cubans and US politicians talk openly about the effects of the embargo, expressing their disssatisfactio with the ideological, physical and economical onlslaught.

“We’ve been working on this film for two years with limited funding,” Monticello, 46, said. “People become a producer if you contribute $20.00 for it. This is the first time it will be shown and I’m sending copies to everybody.”

Monticello left Cuba when he 17 years old. Imprisoned in a camp for speaking up against repression of artists friends who were homosexual, he was scheduled to be transferred to a regulation prison after turning 18. By day he worked in the hellish sugarcane fields and received ideological re-indoctrination at night. While imprisoned he organized protests against the government.

“I was a strong 17 year old,” said Monticello, recalling the dangers he faced while swimming to freedom.

From the eastern end of the island, Santiago De Cuba, his hometown and region of the Sierra Maetras where the revolution was fought, Monticello swam to the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, following instructions from friends.

“When I was swimming I couldn’t thrash in the water because there were sharks and it was very deep,” Monticello said. “Other people tried but didn’t make it.”

Since leaving Cuba Monticello has returned 11 times, taking medicine directly to hospitals by boat.

“In Cuba I am considered a dissident. Here, I am considered the enemy because I bring boats full of medicine to Cuba. For that, the US government is fining me for aiding and abetting the enemy,” Monticello said, adding: “Cuba is not a threat to United States whatsoever.”

Monticello is optimistic his film will be seen by everyone and they will motivate the loosening of its chokehold on the cuban people.

"My hope is that there is an evolution of the socialism that is there [in Cuba] now," said Monticello, "protecting the weakest people, the poorest people. In my opinion, a gvernment can only be judged by how it treats its weakest in society."