In Seguridad, Cuba’s “youngest soldier” uncovers a family secret that compels her to explore her father’s troubled past and its connection to the Cuban Revolution.

In her feature documentary Seguridad, Newfoundland-based filmmaker Tamara Segura—once named “Cuba’s youngest soldier” in a militia publicity stunt—portrays her troubled relationship with her father in the context of the Cuban Revolution.

When Segura accepts a scholarship to study film in Canada, the move offers crucial distance from her alcoholic father. After four years, she returns to Cuba hoping to make amends. But her father’s sudden death just days after her arrival forces Segura to explore his troubled past and the role Cuba’s highly militarized system played in his downfall.

Through a series of deeply personal on-camera interviews with her immediate family, Segura unearths long-held secrets that ultimately tell a story of resilience and profound love between family members. Seguridad artfully weaves a lifetime’s worth of still photographs into its intimate narrative, which offers a rare glimpse into the inner lives of Cubans in the post-revolutionary era.

In her feature documentary, Seguridad, Newfoundland-based filmmaker Tamara Segura—once named “Cuba’s youngest soldier” by the island’s highly militarized system—portrays her troubled relationship with her father in the context of the Cuban Revolution. Using personal and national archives, Segura focuses on an average Cuban family—her own—as she unpacks painful truths about their past and her birthplace, while navigating toward recovery.

When Segura accepts a scholarship to study film in Canada in 2010, the move offers crucial distance from her alcoholic father, Jorge, whose disease cast a perennial shadow over the family.

Canada also brings her space from a political system that turned her birth into a publicity stunt, figuratively enlisting her in the reserves.

After four years away, the former “youngest soldier” returns to Cuba, camera in hand, hoping to make amends with her father. But just days after her arrival, her father dies, propelling Segura into his past. There, she uncovers disturbing, previously unknown events in Jorge’s life that led to his devastating addiction despite his early promise as a husband, father and amateur photographer. Through a series of deeply personal, on-camera interviews with her immediate family, Segura delves into long-held secrets that ultimately tell a story of compassion, resilience and profound love between family members.

“My relationship with my father did not end with his death,” says Segura, whose surname is the Spanish word for “safe,” a concept Jorge’s erratic behaviour often upended. “Forgiving [my father] is an ongoing process with ups and downs that may last my lifetime.” Seguridad artfully weaves a lifetime’s worth of still photographs into its intimate and ultimately uplifting story, which offers a rare glimpse into the inner lives of Cubans in the post-revolutionary era.

Three days had slipped by since my father’s funeral, and I hadn’t been able to cry. Something inside me refused to mourn the man whose alcoholism had caused our family so much pain. “He forged his own path,” I told myself as I cleaned his house and tried to make sense of the chaos he had left behind. Then, I stumbled upon a family secret that changed this perception forever.

Suddenly, all the puzzle pieces of the Segura family began to fall into place: Dad’s inexplicable outbursts of violence, despite his kindness and charm in sobriety; my grandfather’s disillusion with the revolutionary government; the fear in my grandmother’s eyes whenever something remotely political was brought up in conversation. A painful realization of who my father truly was came sharply into focus. He was not morally bankrupt—he was deeply traumatized by the same political system that he once believed in wholeheartedly. It also became clear that the effects of that trauma were still running rampant throughout my own veins. With this awareness came the tears, and a monumental responsibility: to heal my intergenerational trauma in the best way I knew how—by making a film.

Seguridad is a fight for empowerment. It is a visceral attempt to restore my own sense of safety, the word that, paradoxically, translates into our family name. How does one uncover a family’s wound when its members still fear talking about it? My only possible option was to do it lovingly; holding their hands and walking together through the fire. The end result is a web of deeply personal stories that might resonate beyond the walls of our home.

I hope that sharing my family’s story encourages others to engage in similar conversations with their families and communities. That people from all walks of life are inspired to sit on their sofas and discuss the things that shaped them. We all have untold stories buried within us. Although at times frightening, releasing them is an exercise in empathy and a catalyst for personal freedom.