Garcia to make directorial debut

Andy Garcia will make his feature directorial debut on The Lost City, a drama set in the waning golden days of Havana.

Cuban-born Garcia will star alongside Robert Duvall, Dustin Hoffman, Benicio del Toro and Benjamin Bratt in the film.

The picture has been written by Cuban exile author G Cabrera Infante and takes in elements from several of his novels.

Garcia, who previously directed a documentary on a Cuban musician, says: “I have been developing this for 10 years, and now we’re ready to go.”

He will play the owner of a nightspot, one of three brothers caught in Cuba’s turbulent transition from the regime of Fulgencio Batista to the Marxist government of Fidel Castro in the late 1950s. Castro’s regime ultimately leads the club owner to flee to New York.

Bratt will play one of Garcia’s brothers while Duvall will play the antagonistic head of Batista’s secret police force.

“This is a story that has never really been told from the point of view of the people who lived there,” Garcia tells Daily Variety. “It is driven by the tapestry of music, dance and culture, with a love story and conflicts between the brothers enveloped within.”