Directed & Produced by Ollie Aslin & Gary Lennon, Castro’s Spies is an upcoming documentary about the true-life espionage story of an elite group of five Cuban spies who were sent undercover into the United States in the 1990s. The documentary contains several never-before-seen footage, as well as exclusive in-depth interviews with the real-life members of the Cuban Five. Recently, director Gary Lennon sat down with us to discuss the film, and the steps they took along the way during production.
The official synopsis for Castro’s Spies reads, “The thrilling story of an elite group of Cuban spies sent undercover to the US in the 1990s. From their recruitment, training, and eventual capture on US soil; this film peers into a secret world of false identities, love affairs, and betrayal. Using never seen before footage from the Cuban Film Institute’s archive and first-hand testimony from the people at the heart of this story, Castro’s Spies gives a rare glimpse into the shadowy world of a spy – where the stakes are life and death.”
The Cuban Five, or also known as the Miami Five, consists of five Cuban intelligence officers. The names of these men are Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González, and René González. All members of the Cuban Five were first noticed by Cuban intelligence fighting as Cuban soldiers in Angola (Central Africa) against apartheid. On October 6th, 1976, “Cubana 455” was bombed out of the sky, which was the first airliner to be hit by a terrorist group in the western hemisphere. This attack then became a driving force for the spies’ later actions in the United States.
Gary Lennon has been working as a director and producer in Ireland since 2007. Castro’s Spies is his second feature documentary. Gary has directed documentaries in Ireland, Japan, and Brazil across a broad range of genres from sport, music, history, and photography. His debut feature documentary A Doctor’s Sword became both a critical and box office success. Both Ollie Anslin and Gary Lennon are currently working on more projects that are set to be released in the near future.
How Gary Lennon Got Involved With Castro’s Spies
“Ollie had actually been working on it for a couple of years before I got involved. The starting point for him was when he saw a bumper sticker on the back of a car, and it said free to Miami Five. That’s what they were known as in those days by the various different overseas solidarity groups. To be honest, there isn’t that much on Cuba, in the media in this part of the world, so he started researching that. He found out what they were referring to with Miami Five, and he started his research there, and that kind of took him about three and a half years. It’s kind of it was a slow process. And then we got together, and we got the support from the National Film Institute here in Ireland, which allowed us to kind of move things on.”
On Being Able to Travel to Cuba Without Restrictions
“We don’t have any restrictions, so we were able to go. We went about half a dozen times between us both. It’s a unique country, and there isn’t anywhere else like it in the world. One of the things that happens is that there are a lot of amateur filmmakers who get in contact with the Cuban authorities to make various different documentaries. They’re quite skeptical when they get approached by people overseas. It actually did take us quite a long time to work with the embassy staff here to try and get to actually meet the different key people that we needed to meet for this film. Then over the course of the production which took, as all documentaries, it took a couple of years. During that course, we were able to meet the key people of Cuba to get a certain amount of trust. We were allowed to interview the five spies, and question them on a couple of occasions.”
He continued: “On the last trip I was actually over there with the Cuban Film Institute working to get the archives. We were really happy with some of the archives that we found and, for example, the footage of Fidel Castro and his army coming into Cuba, was the first time that had ever appeared on-screen. That’s kind of a wow for us, that was a nice little bonus. It’s such an iconic event.
On Working with the FBI during Production
“There were certain things that the FBI didn’t want us to talk about in terms of how they captured them under certain elements around us. But one of the things that made everything a little bit easier, with all of the things that the FBI did, was that it was all in the court transcripts. We had this reference point in which we could talk about whatever the spies had already told everyone what they did during the trial. They were found guilty on those charges, and neither side (Cuban & American officials) disagreed with what had happened. You know, the disagreement is on the way, the Cuban officials said they’re justified, and the American officials said they weren’t. Put into actual detail, both sides agreed as to what happened. So from that side of things, we really didn’t have too many restrictions with the FBI.”
Castro’s Spies had its theatrical release (venues TBC) and streaming on iTunes (other streamers TBC) on May 13, 2022. The all-new documentary has a current run time of 103 minutes. Filming locations for Castro’s Spies took place in Cuba, United States, United Kingdom, and Ireland. Currently, Rotten Tomatoes has reported the film with an approval rating of 80%, while IMDb reports a rating of 8.0/10. Castro’s Spies was also nominated in 2022 for an IFTA (the Irish version of the BAFTA) for The George Morrison Feature Documentary award.
Read Next
About The Author
Stay connected with us on social media platform for instant update click here to join our Twitter, & Facebook
We are now on Telegram. Click here to join our channel (@TechiUpdate) and stay updated with the latest Technology headlines.
For all the latest Education News Click Here
