Andy Garcia debuted Diamond, his latest feature as a director, last night in Cannes. The film screened Out of Competition.

Billed as a love letter to L.A. and a homage to the film noir of the past, the quirky whodunnit is written and directed by Garcia, who also stars as the mysterious figure of Joe Diamond, an out-of-time private detective with an uncanny gift for solving cases that have stumped the LAPD.

Diamond is the fruit of a 20-year journey for Garcia, who first hit on the idea for the film while helping his daughter Daniella with a homework assignment, which involved writing a short story in the vein of The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler.

This morning, during the film’s official Cannes presser, Garcia said he originally spent years attempting to pitch the story to television networks. 

“I started to pitch an idea about doing a series to HBO and other networks. They all said it’s very interesting, but it wasn’t written, so I just challenged myself and started writing,” Garcia said. “I had 60 pages for a pilot of television, but nobody bought it.” 

Garcia continued to say that he decided to “challenge” himself to expand his pilot script with the hope that further down the line, the networks may “see the longer version and maybe they’ll buy it.”  

“But anyway, 15 years went by of trying to sell it,” Garcia said, adding that he and his producers made Diamond completely independently. 

“No one ever supported the film,” he said.  “I was never able to sell it traditionally to a studio or streamer.” 

Garcia added: “Paul Soriano and his group, and our producers Jay and Frank, pulled this film together independently. We financed it completely independently and then sent it to Thierry and said we hope you like it. And then we got a call back. They said we love your movie and we’d like to have you here.”

The Diamond cast features Vicky Krieps, Rosemarie DeWitt, Brendan Fraser, Bill Murray, Dustin Hoffman, Demián Bichir, Danny Huston, Richardson Jackson, Yul Vazquez, Robert Patrick, and Rachel Ticotin.

The film is the third feature directorial project for Garcia after the 1993 documentary Cachao… Como Su Ritmo No Hay Dos, and 2005’s The Lost City.

He was last in Cannes with Ocean’s Thirteen in 2007 and before that Things to Do In Denver When You’re Dead, which played in Un Certain Regard in 1995.

Later during the presser, Garcia said he has other long-gestating projects in his vault, including a feature titled Hemingway & Fuentes about writer Ernest Hemingway’s friendship with Cuban boat captain Gregorio Fuentes. The friendship inspired the writer’s 1952 book The Old Man and the Sea. 

“I would play Fuentes,” Garcia said. 

Cannes ends on May 23.