Castro’s Spies, directed and produced by Ollie Aslin and Gary Lennon, is an upcoming documentary about a real-life story of some five Cuban spies who were sent deep into America in the 1990s. The documentary also has some never-before-seen footage and exclusive interviews with the real-life members of the Cuban Five. This film was produced by Eagle Hill Films and Gambit Pictures and is expected to come out next month.
The official synopsis for Castro’s Spies states: “A thrilling true life story of a group of elite Cuban spies that were sent undercover into America in the nineties; it follows their recruitment, training, eventual capture on US soil; this movie peers behind the veil at a world of hidden identities, love affairs, and betrayal. Utilizing previously unseen material from archives of the Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos (Cuban Film Institute) as well as first-hand testimony from those involved, Castro’s Spies offers an unusual look inside the secret world of espionage – where lives are played for.”
Five members make up what is referred to as the Cuban Five or Miami Five. These men are namely Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González and René González. All members of these Cuban soldiers fought together against apartheid under command from Angola (Central Africa). On 6th October 1976 “Cubana 455” was downed after being bombed by a terrorist group that became known as such later; it was also first plane cracked by terrorists within the western hemisphere. That event influenced their actions later in the USA.
Following numerous terrorist bombings in Havana City, Cuba, it is believed that Cuba did not send its spies to gather information about the US government but only to monitor Miami’s Cuban exile community. Their mission was spying on numerous organizations related to Cuban-Americans including Alpha 66, F4 Commandos, Cuban American National Foundation, and Brothers to the Rescue. All of them got arrested in September 1998 and later on were convicted in Miami for conspiracy to commit espionage, conspiracy to commit murder, being an agent of a foreign government including other illegal activities within the US.
For Ollie Anslin, Castro’s Spies is his first-ever directed film. He has spent over twenty years as an Emmy award-winning editor and is also highly respected in the UK and Irish television industries. Before he embarked on a career in media and film, he studied Film Studies at Solent University, where he graduated with a 2:1 degree. His journey to Cuba began back in January 2015 which was one month after President Barack Obama returned the Cuban spies through exchange prisoners. Ollie himself always had an interest in political history and almost stumbled across Castro’s Spies by accident.
If you are a documentary filmmaker, you know that you must always be looking for an edge to your story. I saw a bumper sticker about the Miami Five on the back of a car in Ireland, and I became curious. And what happened next? Ollie Anslin tells Eye For Film during an interview. “So anyway, it’s from those stories that I found out about the building global campaign behind the humanitarian side of things, trying to get these guys free. It was not necessarily what they did or didn’t do, but their wives were not allowed to see them. It’s kind of like classic human rights campaigns… But then there was just more and more to the story.”
To start with the interesting thing is that despite all this murkiness going around poisoning people running around doing typical spy genre action we hear about in films, uhm … yeah… again, as I said before, it’s a murky world where they go and bump someone off, or whatever it is was – like regardless of one’s political opinion – these guys believed they were saving their countrymen from being attacked. So they felt obliged, duty bound or something,i.e., without any radicalization stuff . They were patriotic Kenyans. That is what makes me interested.
Gary Lennon has been working in film since 2007 as both director and producer in Ireland (Lennon). The second feature documentary directed by Gary Lennon is Castro’s Spies (Lennon). Gary has directed documentaries ranging from sports and history to music and photographs in Ireland, Japan and Brazil (Lennon). His first full-length documentary project A Doctor’s Sword proved highly successful upon release both critically and at the box office (Lennon). Currently, Ollie Anslin and Gary Lennon are working on other projects which will be released soon.
Castro’s Spies will have a theatrical release (venues TBC) and streaming on iTunes (other streamers TBC) on May 13, 2022. The upcoming documentary has a current run time of 103 minutes. Filming locations for Castro’s Spies took place in Cuba, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Ireland. At the moment Rotten Tomatoes marks the film with an approval rating of 80%, while IMDb reports its rating as 8.0/10 (Lennon). Moreover, in 2022 Castro’s Spies was nominated for an IFTA (the Irish version of the BAFTA) for The George Morrison Feature Documentary Award (Lennon).
René Gonzalez one of the members of Cuban Five was released from prison on October 7th2011 after having served his sentence of thirteen years and three more years probation left in America. Eventually, René was allowed by the authorities to travel back to Cuba when his father died on April 22nd-27th. A federal judge allowed him to stay there if he gave up his US citizenship at that funeral service.” Fernando González was released later on February 27th,2014. On December 17th,2014, the remaining members were eventually released and it became a prisoner swap between the US and Cuba freeing an American intelligence official. (Ratner and Ray) All five Cubans are now free men living in Cuba today.
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