It was in 2005 that actor-filmmaker Andy Garcia found his daughter struggling with her school assignment. The teenager had to write a short story, but after coming up with the initial concept, she was stuck. Garcia, known for his roles in The Godfather: Part III and Ocean’s Eleven, decided to help her out. Thus began a 20-year journey for that story, which eventually became the noir thriller Diamond, premiering at the Cannes Film Festival this year.
What is Diamond about?
Garcia directed the noir-inspired film that follows private detective Joe Diamond, who is hired by the femme fatale widow Sharon Cobbs (Vicky Krieps) to investigate the murder of a wealthy businessman. Andy Garcia himself plays the lead role in the film, which also stars screen legends Bill Murray and Dustin Hoffman.
Diamond is Andy Garcia’s second fictional feature as a director after 2005’s The Lost City, a movie about pre-communist Cuba that also took years to bring to the screen and features Murray and Hoffman.
Diamond’s unusual journey to the screen
Andy Garcia told Reuters that the film is like a child to him. Although Diamond is set in modern-day Los Angeles, the detective and others around him are dressed as if they are in the past. The concept dates back 20 years to when Garcia helped his daughter with a homework assignment: writing a noir short story, which she got stuck on.
“I improvised this character and scenes and stories and inner monologues just like in an hour’s time, and it just sat there in my memory,” he recalled. “I kept going back to it because of the love of the genre and just like, ‘Who is this guy? What’s he doing in L.A. dressed up?’”
Eventually, Andy Garcia fleshed out the film’s story over the years before production began a couple of years ago.
Diamond premieres at Cannes
The Oscar nominee’s passion project screened at the Cannes Film Festival on Tuesday, some two decades after the star first conceived the idea while helping his daughter with a school assignment. The cast and the crew of the film, led by Andy himself, walked the red carpet at the prestigious film festival on Tuesday night.
When the 70-year-old, who also wrote and produced the film, learned it would screen out of competition at the festival, he said he could not have been happier. “It’s the greatest gift in the world to celebrate your child’s achievement,” he told Reuters.