Andy Garcia's LA noir 'Diamond' reaches Cannes after two decades in the making

Cuban‑born Hollywood actor Andy Garcia's passion project, "Diamond," screened at the Cannes Film Festival on Tuesday, some two decades after the "Ocean's Eleven" star first conceived the idea while helping his daughter with a school assignment.

Garcia directed and stars in the noir-inspired film that follows private detective Joe Diamond, who is hired by femme fatale widow Sharon Cobbs, played by Vicky Krieps, to investigate the murder of a wealthy businessman.

U.S. actors Bill Murray and Dustin Hoffman also have roles as side characters.

When the 70-year-old who also wrote and produced the film learned it was going to screen out of competition at the festival, he said he could not have been happier.

Saying the film was like his child, Garcia told Reuters: "It's the greatest gift in the world to celebrate your child's achievement."

Known for roles in films such as "The Godfather: Part III" and "When a Man Loves a Woman," the Oscar-nominated actor has built a decades-long career in Hollywood both in front of and behind the camera.

"Diamond" is his second fictional feature as a director after 2005's "The Lost City," a movie about pre-communist Cuba that also took years to bring to the screen and features Murray and Hoffman.

Although "Diamond" is set in modern-day Los Angeles, the detective and others around him are dressed as if they are in the past.

The concept traces back 20 years to when Garcia helped his daughter with a homework assignment for which she had to write a noir short story, and she got stuck.

"I improvised this character and scenes and stories and inner monologues just like in an hour's time and it just sat there in my memory," he recalled.

"I kept going back to it because of the love of the genre and just like, 'Who is this guy? What's he doing in L.A. dressed up?'"

-Reporting by Rollo Ross and Miranda Murray in Cannes, France; Editing by Matthew Lewis/Reuters