Miami, May 19, 2017 – Miami Dade College’s (MDC) Miami Film Festival and its historic Tower Theater, will host a special presentation of ELIÁN, a documentary directed by Tim Golden and Ross McDonell, at 7 p.m., on Wednesday, May 31. The event is open to the public and to working media.
The special presentation will be followed by a panel discussion with Mothers & Women Against Repression President, Silvia Iriondo, The Miami Herald’s editorial pages editor, Nancy Ancrum, and Elián documentary’s director Tim Golden. The panel will be moderated by Jaie Laplante, executive director of Miami Film Festival, and aims to open a conversation of an event that had a profound impact on our community.
Gravitas Ventures has acquired US theatrical, digital, and video rights to ELIÁN, the remarkable story about Elián González, a 5-year-old Cuban boy plucked from the Florida Straits on Thanksgiving Day in 1999, and the fight over his future. Narrated by Tony Award®-nominee Raúl Esparza, ELIÁN is executive-produced by Academy Award-winner Alex Gibney and his company Jigsaw Productions. Ross McDonnell and Tim Golden are co-directors; McDonnell is also cinematographer. Golden is the writer for the film. ELIÁN is conceived and produced by award-winning filmmaker Trevor Birney of Fine Point Films Ltd.
Featuring powerful personal testimony, candid interviews, and extraordinary archival news footage, the feature presents a gripping account of Elián’s remarkable survival after his mother and others perished at sea, the custody battle between the boy’s Cuban father and Miami-based relatives and the political fight surrounding it all.
Tickets: $13 per person general admission; Tower Theater members, Miami Film Society members, and MDC students $10 (with valid ID). In select theaters nationwide starting on June 2.
Members of the media wishing to attend the screening must RSVP by 5 p.m., May 26, by emailing nli@mdc.edu.
USA Today has declared MDC’s Tower Theater “one of the 10 great places to see a movie in splendor” in the newspaper’s round-up of the best old-fashioned movie palaces in America.