Before Night Falls (2000)

Written by Reynaldo Arenas, Cunningham O'Keefe

Directed by Julian Schnabel

Running Time: 140 minutes (approx)

Production Year: 2000

Rating: 15 Certificate

Production Country: USA

Filmed in Colour

This is the shocking story of visionary Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas, giving an account of his life as a writer and a homosexual and his struggle for freedom of expression.

The film spans the whole of Arenas' (Javier Bardem) life, from his rural childhood and his early embrace of the Revolution to the persecution he would later experience as a writer and homosexual in Castro's Cuba; from his departure from Cuba in the Mariel Harbor exodus of 1980 to his exile and death in the United States.

It is a portrait of a man whose search for freedom - artistic, political, sexual - defied poverty, censorship, persecution, exile and death. Like Arenas' work, Before Night Falls combines passages of transporting imagination with urgent realism; in so doing, it embodies the creative ethos to which Arenas dedicated himself: transforming experience into unfettered expression.

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Cast

Javier BardemReinaldo Arenas
Olivier MartinezLázaro Gómez Carriles
Andrea Di StefanoPepe Malas
Johnny DeppBon Bon/Lieutenant Victor
Michael WincottHerberto Zorrilla Ochoa
Olatz Lopez GarmendiaReinaldo's Mother
Giovanni FloridoYoung Reinaldo
Loló NavarroReinaldo's Grandmother
Sebastián SilvaReinaldo's Father
Carmen BeatoTeacher
Cy SchnabelSmallest School Child
Olmo SchnabelSmallest School Child
Vito Maria SchnabelTeenage Reinaldo
Pedro ArmendárizReinaldo's Grandfather
Diego LunaCarlos

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