The actor joins the film centered on Castro’s illegitimate daughter.
Actor James Franco will play Fidel Castro in the independent film ‘Alina of Cuba’. The 44-year-old actor has been cast in the role as noted by Deadline.
Franco thus joins the previously announced Ana Villafañe, who plays the main character Alina Fernández, Castro’s daughter. In addition, Mía Maestro has also joined the cast as Alina’s mother, Natalia Revuelta, a Cuban socialite who had the protagonist after an affair with Castro. The film will follow Alina’s life as the illegitimate daughter of the Cuban politician and a critic of his rule in Cuba before she left the country and defected to Spain in 1993. Franco’s casting has been supported by Fernández herself, who works in the production as a creative and biographical consultant.
The actor’s choice comes less than a month after the announcement that Franco will appear in the post-war drama ‘Me, You’, the last work of Bille August, scheduled for 2023, in which he will be accompanied by Tom Hollander and Daisy Jacob. Both films represent a comeback for Franco after being sued in 2019 for sexual abuse that took his acting class. The lawsuit was settled last year. Since the lawsuit, the actor has not appeared in a movie. He was previously seen in ‘Zeroville’, the HBO series ‘The Deuce’, ‘Arctic Justice’ or ‘The Ballad of Buster Scruggs’.
‘Alina de Cuba’ will be directed by Miguel Bardem, based on a script written by José Rivera and Nilo Cruz. Production on the film is scheduled to begin on August 15, with the crew shooting in Colombia. The film’s supporting cast includes Alanna de la Rosa, María Cecilia Botero, Harding Junior, Sian Chiong and Rafael Ernesto Hernández. John Martinez O’Felan and Joe Lamy produce for Mankind Entertainment, while Celine Rattray and Trudie Styler produce for Maven Screen Media and Allen Gilmer and Rikki Rushing produce for Redbud Studios. Executive producers include Javier González, Juan Pablo Solano, Simón Beltrán, Luis Mandoki and Thaddeus D. Matula.
Source: Fotogramas
Camila Luna is a writer at Gossipify, where she covers the latest movies and television series. With a passion for all things entertainment, Camila brings her unique perspective to her writing and offers readers an inside look at the industry. Camila is a graduate from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) with a degree in English and is also a avid movie watcher.
