Biography:

Sergio Giral was born in Havana in 1937. He spent his teenage years in the Unites States and returned to Cuba at the time of the revolution in 1959. He began working for the newly-founded ICAIC – the Cuban Institute of Film Art and Industry – in 1961, where he went on to make a number of short films and documentaries in the 1960s and 1970s. 

Giral has dedicated most of his films to telling the story of Caribbean history and Afro-Cuban culture. In 1975, he began his famous trilogy of feature films on the history of slavery in Cuba, which includes El Otro Francisco, Rancheador, and Maluala.  These films were followed by: Techo de vidrio, a contemporary film about a woman lawyer’s fight against government corruption; Plácido, the story of a mulatto Cuban poet accused of leading a conspiracy against the Spanish colonial government in the 19^th Century; and María Antonia, an adaptation of a classic play by the Cuban playwright Eugenio Hernández, set against the backdrop of the Afro-Cuban spiritual tradition of Santería.  

Giral returned to the United States in 1991 and now lives in Miami, where he continues to make films.  His documentary Chronicle of an Ordinance was released in 2000.  One of his most recent films is a documentary on the celebrated Cuban musician Benny Moore, Al barbaro del ritmo.