News best suited for film adaptation this year, like “Homeland” 

As 2023 draws to a close, the world remains in a state of unrest. Natural disasters, wars, diplomatic conflicts, financial crises, and ongoing domestic protests, negative reports all dominate the headlines, with only a few exceptions often centering on technological advancements and discoveries. They are remarkable indeed, yet there’s an underlying concern that some of these breakthroughs, particularly smart AI development, could pose potential threats to humans.

Discerning filmmakers must have drawn insights and begun preparing new projects amidst the uncertainty of how the rapidly evolving AI might impact their profession.

Here are my top 20 international news best suited for film adaptation in 2023. While I'm not sure if anything shocking will happen in the last two weeks of this year, the list shall remain unchanged. Some of the stories remind me of existing related films and I’ve marked them in bold. Do drop a comment by the way, if any of these events bring to mind certain films. I’d very much like to know.

Ranked by local time in chronological order, they are:

8th Jan: Brazilian Congress attack in Brasília——"Elite Squad: The Enemy Within”

1st-4th Feb: Chinese balloon flew over the U.S.

6th Feb: Turkey–Syria Mw 7.8 earthquakes

6th-10th March: Iran and Saudi Arabia agreed to reestablish relations in Beijing

14th March: GPT-4 released globally——“Her”

4th April: Finland Joined NATO in Brussels, Belgium——“Talvisota”

1st May: Collapse of First Republic Bank, San Francisco, California——"Inside Job”

6th May: Coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla at Westminster Abbey, London——“The Crown”

7th May: Arab League brings Syria back into its fold after 12 years

23rd June: Wagner Group rebellion, Russia——“The Star of Fascinating Happiness”

27th June-5th July: Nahel Merzouk riots, France——“Les Misérables”

29th June: Galactic 01, the first commercial spaceflight for Virgin Galactic. Located at Spaceport America, New Mexico

23rd Aug: Wagner Group's leader Yevgeny Prigozhin’s plane crash in Tver Oblast, Russsia——“Navalny”

24th Aug: Discharge of radioactive water from Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant into the Pacific Ocean, Japan

19th-20th Sep: Azerbaijani offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh

7th Oct till now: 2023 Israel–Hamas war in the Gaza Strip——“Born in Gaza”

14th Oct: Solar eclipse across the whole American continent

9th Nov: SpaceX Starship integrated flight test 2 at Starbase, Texas——“Return to Space”

1st Dec: Manuel Rocha espionage case in Miami, Florida——“The Departed”

10th Dec: Milei taking office as the new Argentinian president in Buenos Aires

It's fascinating to envision potential adaptations of these top international news stories onto the big screen, whether through traditional filmmaking or AI technology. The one I want to see most is the Manuel Rocha case, where a one-time U.S. Ambassador to Bolivia allegedly spied for Cuba.

The complexities of international espionage, diplomatic intrigue, and the personal choices of a high-ranking official are rich materials for a compelling and suspenseful narrative.

The news about Victor Manuel Rocha is easy to find on Google. In summary, he is a former American diplomat and the ex-United States Ambassador to Bolivia. Following an extensive FBI counterintelligence investigation, he was arrested and accused of covertly acting as an agent for the Cuban government.

This could become a compelling spy suspense movie if we added some historical background and his relations to other people.

Manuel Rocha, our protagonist, was born in Colombia in 1950 and grew up in Harlem, New York City. He became a naturalized citizen of the United States after earning a master's degree in public administration from Harvard University. Throughout his diplomatic career, Rocha worked in various U.S. Embassies in Latin American countries, including the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Mexico, Cuba, and Argentina, ultimately attaining the position of US Ambassador to Bolivia. Cleverly, Rocha presented himself to his colleagues as politically right-of-center.

Although few details are public, some of his acquaintances now attempt to recall Rocha's pretenses after hearing about his arrest in shock.

A fellow Foreign Service officer, Phillip Linderman, who had worked alongside Manuel in Havana, now feels personally betrayed. Phillip expressed his anger as follows,

“We served together two years in the small U.S. Interests Section community, sharing conversations in meetings and brief hallway encounters, usually lambasting Castro’s struggling regime. My hope today is that deep-cover Marxist Manuel at least chalked me up as counter-revolutionary to be shot and not just, as Lenin would have said, one more useful liberal idiot”.1

Phillip believes that the potential damage of Rocha's betrayal of U.S. policy in Latin America "cannot be minimized".2 Cuba's Dirección General de Inteligencia made a profited successfully by recruiting Manuel, who was then a young idealist influenced by both Allende's Marxism and Pinochet's coup against it.3 Rocha’s lengthy career including work on the National Security Council (NSC) staff enabled him to access a considerable amount of information and "subtly influence policy in a pro-Castro direction".4 He might well have "double-crossed numerous anti-Castro Cubans", particularly democratic and human-rights activists who placed their trust in American hands during his posting in Havana and other assignments abroad.5

To exaggerate the plot a bit, we could introduce Felix Rodriguez, a former CIA agent, as another protagonist, like in Martin Scorsese Oscar best picture “The Departed”.

Felix was a member of the organization Alpha 66, which traces its origins back to the early years of the Revolution. The Cuban government accused the group of planning violent attacks to overthrow the communist regime. One of Felix Rodriguez's notable achievements, or infamies, was helping to capture guerrilla fighter Ernesto "Che" Guevara in Bolivia in 1967. Additionally, he attempted to assassinate Fidel Castro and was involved in placing bombs in Cuban hotels.

The arrest of Manuel Rocha may prove that the flames of the revolutionary fire has never been extinguished, as observed by Felix Rodriguez. On the contrary, the flame of the Cuban revolution continues to spread just under the former CIA agent's watchful eyes.

“We cannot forget that, when he was ambassador to Bolivia, he was the person responsible for Evo Morales not becoming president, which explicitly almost no ambassador ever did. Rocha threatened everyone that if Morales became president, US aid to that country would be canceled," recalled Felix.

Felix and Rocha maintained a close and enduring friendship, often meeting in Argentina and El Salvador. "If it turns out to be true, it would be the greatest disappointment of my life," Felix said.

Now we can conclude that the driving force pushing Manuel Rocha into the arms of the Cuban revolution is not for money but for his own idealistic brand of Marxism. "The class-struggle ideology that unleashed so much 20th-century conflict and today has been repackaged as a social-justice weapon to push race and gender revolution." Although feeling deeply betrayed, Phillip Linderman, Manuel Rocha’s ex-colleague, still contributes an article titled “Manuel Rocha: Fanatic, Spy—and My Colleague” to appreciate Rocha’s idealism, serving as a neutral voiceover in my imaginary film.

So, should this biographical film about Manuel Rocha be a new season of "Homeland" or a Latin American version of "The Departed"?

References

Linderman, Phillip. "Manuel Rocha: Fanatic, Spy—and My Colleague" , The American Conservative (December 2023). https://www.theamericanconservative.com/manuel-rocha-fanatic-spy-and-my-colleague/.