James Franco cast as Fidel Castro in ‘Alina Of Cuba’

Actor James Franco is set to essay the role of Cuban leader Fidel Castro in filmmaker Miguel Bardem’s feature “Alina of Cuba”.

According to entertainment website Deadline, Imagen Award winner Mia Maestro has been roped in to play Natalia “Naty” Revuelta, the Cuban-born socialite Castro has a passionate love affair with.

Franco and Maestro join actor Ana Villafaee who is portraying the part of Castro’s daughter Alina Fernandez.

Oscar-nominated writer Jose Rivera and Pulitzer Prize winner Nilo Cruz have penned the screenplay.

It follows the true-life story of Cuban exile turned social advocate, Fernandez, whose birth was the result of the tryst between Revuelta and Castro.

Fernandez came to know that she was Fidel Castro’s daughter at the age of 10 when after years of secret visits to her home, her mother finally revealed that “El Comandante” was her biological father. Alina grew to become one of Castro’s most outspoken critics, arrested on more than one occasion for trying to leave, and was classified as a dissident forbidden to travel outside of Cuba.

The film is being shot in and around Colombia’s Cartagena and Bogota.

Actors Alanna de la Rosa, Maria Cecilia Botero, Harding Junior, and Cuban-born actors Sian Chiong and Rafael Ernesto Hernandez round out the cast.