2023-05-19 23:01:45
Leipzig/Havana – Turquoise water, white sand, palm trees – and a beheaded German communist on the beach. Ernst Thälmann Island off Cuba’s south coast is a paradise that revolutionary leader Fidel Castro († 90) once gave to the GDR and that nobody is allowed to enter.
Now a camera crew has made it to the forbidden island and secretly shot a movie (“Ernesto’s Island”) that premiered this week.
THE CUBA COUP!
The small Caribbean island was given to the GDR by Fidel Castro in 1972. In the back the still intact Thälmann monument
The film is about Matthias (Max Riemelt, 39, “Napola”, “Der Rote Kakadu”) who is supposed to fulfill his deceased mother’s last wish and scatter her ashes on Thälmann Island. The problem for the film team: You need a special permit for the island, which is practically never granted, especially not to foreigners. Director Ronald Vietz (46) to BILD: “In order to be able to work in Cuba at all, we pretended to produce a documentary about the beauties of the country. We kept quiet about the actual project.”
The secret crossing cost a year’s wages
In order not to attract attention, the crew was reduced to director Vietz, cameraman Benjamin Raeder and leading actor Riemelt. In the luggage only a small, inconspicuous handheld camera.
Vietz: “We gave a Cuban fisherman, who actually takes tourists out to sea to go fishing, 2,000 euros.” In Cuba, a year’s wages! “In the relatively shallow water, he let us off the boat and waited three hours in front of the island. Then we had the sequence, which is only two minutes long in the film, in the can. Then the fisherman brought us back.”
Before that, however, they still took private photos, some with a self-timer and next to the “decapitated” Thälmann. The monument to the GDR idol was erected there in the 1970s. At the end of the 90s, a hurricane is said to have blown the “Mitch” head off the pedestal.
By the way: Almost 50 years ago, an East German camera team had already visited Thälmann Island and the “Playa RDA” (“Beach of the GDR”). Schlager star Frank Schöbel (80 today) shot a video there with his partner Aurora Lacasa (76) for the song “Island in the Gulf of Cazones”.
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