Cuban Actors Vanish Before NY Film Premiere, Director Hasn’t Heard From Them
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UnaNocheFilm(NEW YORK) — The director of a film about young Cubans defecting would like to know that her real-life missing stars — who may have defected en route to the premiere — are safe.
Two of the stars of writer-director Lucy Mulloy’s film Una Noche vanished in Miami as the group was making their way to New York from Cuba for the film’s premiere.
“Though they’ve made difficult choices about what to do at present, I wish them the very best in all their endeavours and I hope I will get to see them again soon,” Mulloy said in a statement emailed to ABC News. “It was a pleasure working with them. I would love to know that they are well.”
The film is about three young Cubans who decide to flee the country on a raft after one of them is accused of assault. The film follows the day they attempt to make it 90 miles across the ocean to Florida.
The British-born director recently graduated from New York University’s graduate film program and Una Noche is her first feature film.
All three of the film’s stars — Anailin de la Rua de la Torre, Javier Nunez Florian and Dariel Arrechada — were expected to appear at New York’s Tribeca Film Festival for the premiere. But Torre and Florian, both 19, were nowhere to be found the night of the event.
Arrechada, 21, was the only one to attend the premiere.
“We can’t say for sure what the status of these guys are,” Katie Tichacek Kaplan, spokeswoman for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), told ABC News on Monday. “There are a number of things they could be thinking. We just don’t know what their plans are.”
Kaplan said that people in similar situations who come to the U.S. for asylum have a year to apply.
A State Department official told ABC News on Monday, “We are aware of the reports, but we don’t have any further information. We have not been in contact with the film festival organizers or the Cuban actors.”
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio