For those of us who have visited Cuba, the scenario is all too familar, a pair of European women stumbling through a series of romantic and social misadventures on an Island as intoxicating as it is incomprehensible to foreigners. In Day of the Flowers, Rosa, played by Eva Birthistle of Ken Loach's Ae Fond Kiss, is a political activist, who travels to Cuba with her materialistic sister, Ailie (Charity Wakefield), to take the ashes of their father. As a young man, he had been an idealist, travelling to Cuba in the heady days of ’68 to support the revolution, and meeting and falling in love with their mother there. The sisters meet Tomas (Carlos Acosta) on board a bus, a handsome Cuban working part time as a local tour guide, and the roller coaster journey to inter the ashes with their beloved mother on ‘The Day of the Flowers’, begins to unravel. John Roberts is one of the UK's up and coming directors and this is his latest film after his commercially successful and BAFTA award winning Dreamworks film Paulie. What made you want to make this film? As with all stories, it was the human part that interested me- the relationship between these two sisters and also the fact that, right away, I could see that the main character, Rosa, was in some sort of crisis. I made the decision that this was something I would love to make having read only a few pages; though it actually took a long time working with Eirene (Houston, the screenwriter) to finally tease out what was really going on. Like all good stories, the truth involved discovering lots of hidden layers. What I also really liked was the humour in the writing. It was a potentially ‘dark’ subject but Eirene treated it with a light touch. I felt if I could catch that feeling it would make an enjoyable as well as moving film. The Cuban location was also a real factor- shooting a film there was an exciting challenge. As well as being visually stunning, I saw it as a bit of an adventure. Although we wanted the film to have some kind of political dimension, actually the political side wasn’t what I wanted to explore. Rather the effect of politics (or ideology) on people’s personal development was what interested me – how a young mind can be crippled by any ideology, and maybe how this young woman begins to emerge through her experiences in Cuba. We related that to the way we looked at the country in the end. There are so many Cuban films that are about people escaping the political situation there, but very few look at the Cuban life- the way people live and interact on a human level. I went with an open mind, I’d never been there and I didn’t have a particular agenda, but I was aware that the main character had an idealized view of things and we were going to test that out. But the interesting thing about stories is they don’t lie. You can’t sell propaganda in a good story, because an audience is going to reject it. The truth will out, and the truth was more complicated. It would have been incredibly boring to reduce it down to a simplistic political point of view – for or against. We did consider making the script a whole lot tougher, but every time we tried to push a heavier political angle, it killed it. So we tried to keep it light, even though the story delivers quite a punch at the end- but on a personal level. How did you end up casting Carlos Acosta? In terms of getting Carlos involved, there was no other choice in our minds for the main Cuban actor. I know Eirene had him in mind when she was writing. When we were on a recce in Cuba, the Cuban casting director mentioned that she knew him, and when we got back to London we got a call saying he’d like to meet. And that nailed it for us. The only worry was whether Carlos was a screen actor, and I think he felt the same - he didn’t want to be shown up. So it was a bit of a nervous meeting on both parts, but actually he ended up being a natural screen actor. He’s got a very natural way with the camera - he was extremely relaxed and incredibly focused. He needs to do very little and your eyes are going to go to him. And the other actors…? Eva I’d seen in Ae Fond Kiss, and she was superb in that. We had quite an exhaustive audition process and Eva just kept topping everyone. She was so clever and so instinctive. I was also reminded of something I’d read – I think it was Elia Kazan - that if a character goes through change in a movie, you should cast for the person that he or she becomes – because you can’t ‘act’ that bit – it’s who you are. And I thought that was really important because Eva is a very intelligent but a spirited and funny person, too. And that’s the person Rosa becomes – the person that’s been locked away all these years. The tendency might have been to cast someone quite dark for the part, but actually the part lightens at the end. Charity was in America, so she did a reading over the Internet and as soon as I saw her I thought ‘yes,’ because I was looking for someone intelligent and funny. She really got the humour, and she’s so likeable as well as being a brilliant actress, so I had no doubts at all with casting her. Bryan Dick just walked in the door and we knew straight away- no doubt. He’s an absolutely fantastic actor. We cast Chris as Ernesto having gone to Cuba and having looked at Cuban actors- there was no one that stood up to the part as well as Chris. Also, part of our thinking was in the event that we didn’t get out of Cuba, or we were sent home early- because we were jumping into the unknown there, no-one had shot a British film there since the 50s- that we had to be sure we could finish the film. It made sense to cast the Cuban character from the UK. So Chris had the additional task of becoming Cuban, which he did really well. Why didn’t you use Scottish actors for the leads? We did think about the casting a lot and whether to go authentic Scottish or Glaswegian. A small part was the accent thing- our intention was to make a film that plays mainstream and we felt it was very much a mainstream story, rather than art house. In the end, I decided that we’d cast the best actors, wherever they came from. How did you find working in Cuba? We shot for seven weeks and I was probably there for seven months. Recces, finding locations, casting. We had a big Cuban cast as well- and we got fantastic Cuban actors – the very best. We worked on the physical production with ICIAC and they provided a fantastic Cuban crew. It was a wonderful experience and we made a lot of friends whilst we were there. The beauty of Cuba doesn’t always translate. You actually have to work quite hard to make it look like you imagine it. You have to be very selective. You see all this stuff happening- lorries full of people, horses being ridden up the motorway- and then you start rolling the cameras and nothing happens. So much of it was actually designed. The scene with the horses running across the field with the cowboys was an exception - I had seen those horses and thought they’d be great to get on film, and driving past, we were due to shoot something else, I saw them in a field and I said ‘stop’. We had Eva with us and we shot that scene off the cuff. Day of the Flowers will be in cinemas from the 29th November 2013 www.dayoftheflowers.com