Human Rights Watch International Film Festival - London

BEFORE NIGHT FALLS
directed by Julian Schnabel

BEFORE NIGHT FALLS (Benefit Gala Film)
Julian Schnabel - US - 2000 - 125m - 35mm - drama
In English and Spanish with English subtitles

Unquestionably, Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas was one of the major talents to have emerged from the Latin American literary boom of the 1960s. Running afoul of the Castro regime as both a political dissident and an openly gay man, Arenas was harassed, imprisoned and physically abused - all the more so because he managed to smuggle out and publish his works abroad. Adapting Arenas' brilliant, posthumously published autobiography, painter and film director Julian Schnabel magnificently captures the style and flavour of Arenas' writing, with brief, intensely vivid scenes that evoke a succession of remembrances. The film boasts a remarkably strong cast, with an Oscar-nominated performance by Spanish actor Javier Bardem as Reinaldo, who embodies both the strength and vulnerability of a man for whom, as he wrote during his New York exile, "there is really no solace anywhere."

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BEFORE NIGHT FALLSdirected by Julian Schnabel

BEFORE NIGHT FALLS
directed by Julian Schnabel