Hemingway Biopic Wraps Havana Filming

The upcoming biopic Papa, about Ernest Hemingway and his friendship with a young journalist, finished filming in Havana this weekend, making it the first full-length Hollywood feature shot in Cuba since 1959. The film re-enacts many historical events from '50s Cuba, a tumultuous period that led to the 1959 revolution and, ultimately, the embargo that has prevented other movies set in the country, like The Godfather Part II and Havana, from being filmed there. “It was an absolute passion to actually make it in Cuba where everything that is in the script happened,” said director Bob Yari. Papa’s international crew received a U.S. Treasury Department license to film in Cuba which, among other things, required it to be qualified as a documentary.