Andy Garcia’s independent film The Lost City officially opened April 28th, but is only gradually beginning to show up on the screens of suburban art theatres.

Made with a budget of only ten million dollars, TLC was a personal labor of love begun by Garcia more than twenty years ago, in 1983, which arose from an idea of portraying pre-Castro Havana as a kind of Casablanca.

The protagonist (played by Garcia himself), “Fico” Fellove, is a member of the younger generation of an upper-class Cuban family. His father, Don Federico Fellove, is a humanist professor at Havana University. His uncle, Donoso Fellove, manages the family tobacco plantation and produces cigars. Fico is an apolitical man-about-town, content to preside amiably over his popular nightclub, El Tropico, passionate only about the music and dance of his native Cuba.

Fico admires Aurora (played by Spanish supermodel Inés Sastre), the beautiful wife of Luis, his liberal idealist brother (who is actively engaged in a conspiracy of patriots to topple the corrupt dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista), and serves as her friend and confidante. But family is the most important thing to Fico, and he is devoted to both his brothers, even to Ricardo, the self-righteous and fanatical radical leftist.

The Fellove family’s pleasant way of life is soon, of course, destroyed by Revolution. TLC combines the story of the family’s unhappy fate with a lyrical portrait of a Lost City, a lost country, a lost way of life. Garcia delivers both a remarkable performance and a very moving film.

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History of the project.