presents a and production in association with Directed by Ross McDonnell and Tim Golden Produced by Trevor Birney Executive Produced by Alex Gibney Press Contact: Daniels Murphy Communications, LLC 79 Madison Avenue Floor 7, NYC, NY 10016 Office: 212-414-0408
INTRODUCTION Executive produced by Academy Award-winner Alex Gibney, this is the remarkable story of Elián González, a fiveyear-old Cuban boy plucked from the Florida Straits, and how the fight over his future sparked a flashpoint for simmering US-Cuban tensions. Featuring powerful personal testimony, candid interviews and extraordinary news archive, this Fine Point Films and Jigsaw Productions feature presents a gripping account of Elián s remarkable survival after his mother and ten others perished at sea, the custody battle between the boy s Cuban father and Miami-based relatives and the momentous political fight surrounding it. Offering a never-before-seen intimate portrait of Elián today, this is a story of family and the challenges of reconciliation; between divided relatives and two nations working towards healing old wounds. A Fine Point Films & Jigsaw Production. 3
SYNOPSIS November 25th 1999 - The Florida Straits, three miles off the coast of Ft. Lauderdale. A five year old Cuban boy is rescued from the sea by fisherman after the boat he was in sank. Frenzied news reports inform us that eleven passengers on the small boat, including the child s mother, have drowned. As the boy, wrapped in a blanket, is bundled into an ambulance, his wide brown eyes stare straight at us through the lens of a news camera. This is Elián González, a boy caught between two worlds. With unprecedented access to Elián González, his family and key players in the saga, ELIÁN uses one boy s remarkable journey to examine a pivotal moment in turbulent Cuban and U.S. relations. The film plots how the Elián González custody battle between his Cuban father and Miami-based relatives embodied and fed into the simmering tensions between the two countries; evoking the wrath of Cubans who wanted the boy returned to them and the Cuban-American exile community in Florida who wanted him to stay in the U.S. From the extraordinary arrival of Elián to American shores in 1999 to the dramatic raid in which he was taken by U.S. federal officials to be reunited with his father, the film is an exploration of how political symbols are used and abused. Encompassing the golden-hued streets of Miami and Florida, the closed clandestine worlds of Cuba and the sharkinfested waters in between, emotive first-hand testimony, a wealth of news archive and an intimate portrait of Elián today, this film will document how private and personal, as well as national and international conflicts collided. 4
KEY PRODUCTION TEAM DIRECTOR & CINEMATOGRAPHER ROSS McDONNELL Born in Dublin, Ross McDonnell has worked as a photographer, cinematographer and director. His work has been published in The New York Times, Art in America, The Observer, The Washington Post, The Irish Times and Fader magazine among others. He has received numerous grants and awards and was twice nominated for an Irish Film and Television Award. His film Colony (2010) received its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival and won the First Appearance Award for first feature film at IDFA in Amsterdam. DIRECTOR TIM GOLDEN Tim Golden is an investigative journalist who knows the Elián story like no one else. His in-depth coverage of the story in 2000 revealed in detail the real characters behind the headlines. He has previously been managing editor for news and investigations at The Marshall Project, a senior writer at The New York Times, Miami Herald and United Press International. He has twice shared the Pulitzer Prize for journalism, once for articles about drug corruption in Mexico, another for national reporting on the Iran-Contra affair. 5
KEY PRODUCTION TEAM PRODUCER TREVOR BIRNEY Award-winning producer / director and founder of Fine Point Films, Trevor Birney has a long track record in making high-end documentaries for international distribution. In 2016, he produced Bobby Sands: 66 Days, (BBC Storyville, DR and SVT). The film, directed by Brendan J. Byrne, premiered at the 2016 Hot Docs Film Festival in Toronto and was described by Variety magazine as a finely crafted documentary [which] may well long stand as the most balanced among such treatments. In addition to Elián, current projects he is producing include: No Stone Unturned - a new Alex Gibney-directed feature-documentary Best - an ESPN / BBC feature-doc about troubled footballer George Best, directed by Daniel Gordon A collaboration with Fork Films for their latest Women, War and Peace series Birney co-produced the Emmy award winning, Alex Gibney feature-documentary, Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, which also won an Irish Film & Television Award in February, 2013. During his career he has produced and directed a wealth of landmark documentaries about the conflict in Northern Ireland - for national and international broadcasters. In 2016, he directed a BBC documentary about the 1996 London Docklands bombing by the IRA, described by the Irish News as a triumph of journalism. 6
KEY PRODUCTION TEAM EXECUTIVE PRODUCER ALEX GIBNEY Director Alex Gibney has been called the most important documentarian of our time (Esquire) and one of America s most successful and prolific documentary filmmakers (The NY Times T Magazine). Known for his cinematic, gripping, and deeply insightful documentaries, the filmmaker has won the Academy Award, multiple Emmy Awards, the Grammy Award, several Peabody Awards, the DuPont-Columbia, The Independent Spirit, The Writers Guild of America Awards, and more. Gibney was honored with the International Documentary Association s Career Achievement Award in 2013 and the first ever Christopher Hitchens Prize in 2015. Films: Taxi to the Dark Side (2008 Oscar) Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (Oscar nominated 2006), Triple Emmy Award winning and Peabody Award Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God (HBO) and Emmy winning The History of the Eagles (Showtime), 2015 Peabody Award and Grammy nominated Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown, The Armstrong Lie (2013), which was short-listed for the 2014 Academy Award and nominated for the 2014 BAFTA Award, along with his film We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks (2013); and Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer (2010), which was nominated for three Emmys. Gibney s Jigsaw Productions TV series: The New Yorker Presents, a series which brings to life the award-winning The New Yorker magazine, Cooked, a four part docu-series based on Michael Pollan s book, Death Row Stories, a popular CNN series executive produced by Gibney and Robert Redford, Edge of Eighteen, a groundbreaking series for Al Jazeera America where Jigsaw mentored high school seniors as they filmed their lives on the brink of adulthood and Parched, a four part investigative docu-series about the water crisis, which will air globally on NatGeo and in a limited theater release. Gibney s latest films include: the triple Emmy and Peabody award-winning Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, the most-watched HBO documentary in a decade; Sinatra: All or Nothing at All, a two-part special on legendary entertainer Frank Sinatra (HBO), Steve Jobs: The Man in The Machine, an evocative portrait that re-examines the legacy of Steve Jobs and our relationship with the computer, and Zero Days which was released by Magnolia Pictures in July of 2016 and had its broadcast premiere on Showtime on November 5, 2016. Gibney is set to direct his first narrative feature film, The Action, for Lionsgate, based on Betty Medsger s book The Burglary: The Discovery of J Edgar Hoover s Secret FBI. He is developing a drama series for HBO, with Laura Dern starring and executive producing, a drama series for Hulu based on Lawrence Wright s bestseller The Looming Tower, as well as a drama series based on his documentary Zero Days. 7
KEY PRODUCTION CREDITS CNN FILMS Presents In Association With BORD SCANNÁN NA HÉIREANN/ THE IRISH FILM BOARD and NORTHERN IRELAND SCREEN and BBC STORYVILLE A FINE POINT FILMS and JIGSAW Production Original Music By McKENZIE STUBBERT Cinematography By ROSS McDONNELL Story By TIM GOLDEN MICHAEL J. PALMER Written By TIM GOLDEN Edited By MICHAEL J. PALMER HANNAH VANDERLAN Executive Producer for Fine Point Films BRENDAN J. BYRNE Co-Executive Producer RICHARD PERELLO Co-Producer ERIN EDEIKEN
Executive Producer for CNN Films AMY ENTELIS Supervising Producer for CNN Films COURTNEY SEXTON Executive Producer STACEY OFFMAN Executive Producer MAIKEN BAIRD Executive Producer ALEX GIBNEY Produced By TREVOR BIRNEY Directed By TIM GOLDEN AND ROSS McDONNELL DEVELOPED AND MADE WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF INTERNATIONAL SALES BY CONTENT MEDIA CORPORATION
COMPANY PROFILES Fine Point Films was established in February 2013 by award-winning producer / director and former journalist Trevor Birney. In 2012, Trevor co-produced the Emmy award winning, Alex Gibney directed feature-documentary, Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God and founded Fine Point to build on the success of that collaboration. The company specialises in the development, production and co-production of high-end feature documentaries for the international market; projects that attract top international directing talent. In addition to ELIÁN, Fine Point s current production slate includes the feature-length documentary Bobby Sands: 66 Days (BBC Storyville, DR and SVT), which premiered at the 2016 Hot Docs Film Festival in Toronto and was described by Variety magazine as a finely crafted documentary [which] may well long stand as the most balanced among such treatments, a new Alex Gibney-directed feature-doc called No Stone Unturned, Best - an ESPN / BBC feature-doc about George Best directed by Daniel Gordon and a collaboration with Fork Films for their latest Women, War and Peace series. Jigsaw Productions is helmed by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney, considered one of the most prolific and thought-provoking documentary filmmakers of our generation. Jigsaw has produced many acclaimed films, including the triple Emmy-winning Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, one of the most watched documentaries in HBO s history; the Oscar-winning Taxi to the Dark Side; and the Grammy and Peabody Award-winning Mr. Dynamite: The Rise and Fall of James Brown. Gibney s latest film, Zero Days, a cyber-thriller chronicling the Stuxnet cyber-attack, premiered at the 2016 Berlinale. Jigsaw s 2012 partnership with Content Media has seen the company expand from award-winning features to long-form series on such platforms as CNN (Death Row Stories), Amazon (The New Yorker Presents), Netflix (Cooked, Dirty Money), A&E (The Killing Season), and Nat Geo (Parched) with a number of scripted and non-fiction series in development. From geopolitics to sports, from finance to music, all of Jigsaw s projects reflect the myriad interests of its founder. And whether the company is creating a documentary or narrative film, a scripted or unscripted series, Jigsaw adheres to the ethos: well-told, scrupulously researched, artfully filmed stories which ignite our curiosity will always have an audience, on screens small or large, on platforms digital or traditional, and can achieve critical and commercial success without sacrificing style or authenticity. 10