Cuban director mum on missing actors

NEW YORK – A Cuban director failed to show up at a press conference Tuesday after two of her actors mysteriously disappeared en route to a New York film festival.

The two young actors were scheduled to attend a screening of the movie “Una Noche” at New York’s Tribeca Film Festival on Thursday night, in an odd case of life imitates art.

The movie is about three teenaged Cuban boat people who want to defect to the United States.

On the way to New York from Havana, actress Anailin de la Rua de la Torre and co-star Javier Nunez Florian disappeared during a stopover at Miami International Airport and have not been seen since.

Director Lucy Mulloy and Dariel Arrechada, the only actor who made it to the film festival, were scheduled to appear Tuesday a press conference on Latin American and Spanish films organized by the Cervantes Institute in New York.

And after the no-show, neither they nor their publicist responded to telephone and e-mail inquiries.

Tribeca Film Festival organizers told AFP they had no contact with the two missing actors.

Officials from two Cuban exile organizations in Miami, Democracy Movement and the Cuban Democratic Directorate, said they did not know the whereabouts of the young actors.

Mulloy said Monday that she was surprised by the actors’ disappearance.

“I really was thinking that they were going to come here and enjoy the festival, and I thought they would love to participate in it,” Mulloy told The Huffington Post.

“Una Noche” is Mulloy’s first movie, focusing on the misadventures of the young people as they plan to cross the 140 miles from Cuba to Florida. It features the lives of poor Cubans who see little future for themselves from the Western perspective of progress.

The film, which was co-produced with American and British contributions, is competing at the Tribeca Film Festival.