Antonio Banderas is going back to work with the Argentine duo who made him a vain movie star in Official Competition, and this time the stakes are a lot higher than ego.
Banderas will star as Capt. Álvaro Salcedo in Mare Nostrum, the next feature from writer-directors Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat, Screen International reported.
Salcedo commands a giant commercial container ship hauling a billion-euro cargo from Istanbul to Cape Town. In the middle of a storm, he finds a small boat packed with African migrants about to sink. He takes them aboard, not realizing that no European country will let them disembark. The rescue sets off an international political crisis that drags in European leaders, activists, coast guards, a rock star, a corporate lawyer, insurance brokers and a band of African refugees.
Cohn and Duprat said the film explores migration, borders and the contradictions of human nature, and they called it "our biggest and most ambitious film to date."
The pair won critics over at the 2021 Venice Film Festival with Official Competition, which put Banderas opposite Penélope Cruz and Óscar Martínez. Their earlier film The Distinguished Citizen won a Goya for best Ibero-American film.
HanWay Films is launching world sales at the American Film Market in Los Angeles. José Luis Escolar produces, and Banderas is also an executive producer. Filming is set to begin in Spain in March 2027.
