Moscow/Tbilisi, Oct 19 (DPA) Hollywood actor Andy Garcia was in Tbilisi preparing to star in a film about last year’s war between Russia and Georgia, media reports said Monday.
Garcia is to play Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili in the film by director Renny Harlin, according to the Interfax news agency.

The president, who came under fire for military intervention in Georgia’s breakaway region of south Ossetia, has agreed to filming at his residence.

The 53-year-old Cuban-born Garcia has starred in a host of big-screen films such as The Godfather, Modigliani, Jennifer Eight and Oceans Eleven.

Harlin, who has produced or directed films that include Nightmare on Elms Street 4, Prison and Die Hard 2: Die Harder, has described his latest work as “a great human story with tragic, serious overtones”.

State television in both Russia and Georgia have been showing patriotic films in which each blames its neighbour for the conflict.

According to media reports in Moscow, Serbian filmmaker Emir Kusturica, who twice won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, is also planning a film about the August 2008 war in the volatile region.