Working for Belgian television, Marker returned to Cuba to gauge the course of the revolution and to respond to his early open embrace of the Castro-led movement in ¡Cuba Si! Implicitly questioning and correcting Castro's dominant figure, The Battle of the Ten Million follows Castro's bravura call for an unprecedentedly large sugar cane crop of ten million tons. Marker transforms Castro's gambit into a brilliant auto-critique, by turning instead to the Cuban people as a collective presence and voice larger than their leader, focusing on dignity, toil and unflagging spirit of the sugar cane workers.

A potent study of political disorientation, state terrorism and exile, Marker's "anonymous" 1973 Super-8 film reads as an allegory and vivid evocation of the violent paroxysms and unrest roiling Latin America and much of the world at the time.

One of several SLON newsreel interventions into Latin American politics, this short reveals Marker's deep concern and anger over the especially dire situation in Chile.