A resident in the city of Los Angeles, California, Nyad on Thursday posted a video on her Instagram page in which she announces her reunion with Cuba this time because she will attend the 45th Festival of New Latin American Cinema in Havana, where a film about her life will be screened on Saturday.
“Hello my Cuban friends, my favorite people,” said the exceptional athlete of aquatic marathons, taking a tour in images of her house where murals of emblematic places in Cuba can be seen.
“I swam from Cuba to Florida 11 years ago and right now there is a movie with two famous stars, Annette Bening and Jodie Foster,” the journalist and writer of four books said when referring to the film released in 2023.
I will be there with my coach Bonnie Stoll, she commented in the video in which she invites them to share a session of “questions and answers at the 23 and 12 movie theater” in the Cuban capital. “I really want to talk to you,” the long-distance swimmer added.
According to the program to which Prensa Latina had access, Nyad will meet with students from the National Swimming School. She will participate in activities at the National Center for Sexual Education and will meet with authorities from the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC).
The film ‘Nyad’ is a biographical sports drama directed by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin and written by Julia Cox, which had its world premiere at the 50th Telluride Film Festival in Colorado on September 1.
Diana Nyad (born in New York on August 22, 1949) attracted national attention in 1975 when she swam 45 kilometers around Manhattan in record time, and in 1979 when she swam 164 kilometers from Bimini, Bahamas, to Juno Beach, Florida.
In 2013, on her fifth attempt, she accomplished the feat of swimming the distance of 110 miles (117 kilometers) that separates Havana and Key West, Florida.
Her achievements earned her induction into several Halls of Fame, including the National Women’s Sports Hall of Fame in the United States in 1986 and the International Open Water Swimming Hall of Fame in 1978.
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