Love him or hate him, it can scarcely be denied that Fidel Castro was one of the most significant political figures of the 20th century, and he will be spoken of well into the twenty-first and beyond. Estela Bravo's documentary FIDEL, THE UNTOLD STORY, is unabashedly pro-Castro, but in a country which features political discourse of such diminished level men like George W. Bush can become president of the United States, perhaps it is a fortunate thing that a film maker has produced a work that offers insight not only into Castroism, but to the appeal it has long held in different corners of the Americas and the world. For better or worse, Fidel Castro for much of his life has walked much of his talk as regards the creation of a world in which nations on the periphery no longer have to exchange their resource on terms favorable to the most powerful countries. For millions of people in the so-called Third World, he is a hero, and it is ironic that in the United States- which claims the most open exchange of ideas and information of any civilization anywhere in the history of the world- there is so very little understanding of Castro, or the Cuban phenomenon. Well, Estela Bravo offers us a film that provides a little clarity on the question. As a high school teacher, I can appreciate the discussion this work will spark, and I recommend it highly. Sympathetic though Bravo's work is, she picks up on a truth about Casro that George Orwell once spoke of Gandhi: there are a great many politicians in this era, in our world who will leave behind them nowhere near so clean a smell as will Fidel. And that's pretty sad, but it's true.