Michael Moore, Matt Dillon among big names for Havana film fest

Michael Moore, Matt Dillon and Geraldine Chaplin will be among the headliners at next month’s 40th Havana Festival of New Latin American Cinema, organizers said Friday.

The lineup for this year’s festival, dedicated to the 90th anniversary of the birth of Cuban filmmaker Tomas Gutierrez Alea (1928-1996), also includes Emir Kusturica and the filmmaking team of Iciar Bollain and Paul Laverty.

Kusturica will offer a special presentation for his documentary about former Uruguayan President Jose “Pepe” Mujica at the opening of the event on Dec. 6, festival director Ivan Giroud said at a press conference in Havana.

Moore will be here for the Cuban premiere of his “Fahrenheit 11/9,” a documentary about the 2016 US election campaign and the presidency of Donald Trump; while Bollain and her husband will be on hand for the screening of “Yuli,” their film about the Cuban dancer Carlos Acosta.

The 10-day festival will exhibit on the screens of the Cuban capital more than 370 films, of which 333 are from Latin America and the Caribbean, demonstrating “our commitment to films made in these latitudes,” Giroud said.

The relatively few European and Asian films included in the festival “have great reviews and were rigorously chosen,” he added.