Stone uses the same fractured, hyper-edited technique that make his features so distinctive. With three cameras filming all the time, Stone got enough footage to zoom in on telling details, such as the way Castro holds his hands, cuts through his meat while eating or shuffles his feet when embarrassed.The terms of their agreement were that either Stone or Castro could call cut at any time, and in this safety zone of shared power, Castro relaxes and blooms, opening up in a way he’s never done before for Western cameras. He holds forth, for example, about the former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev (“a wily peasant”) and dismisses the cult of America’s First Ladies as “ridiculous”. He also hints that the South African authorities hid their country’s neutron bomb when Nelson Mandela came to power.Like a more bullish version of Nick Broomfield with a better subject to explore, Stone unashamedly makes himself a character in the film; and the rapport between him and Castro is rather sweet. Castro comes across as a mischievous Marxist grandpa, which is just what he is in one way (he sired seven children). We see Stone offering to get him Viagra, in exchange for some Cuban medicine he’s impressed with (“PPD10 – great stuff, very good for cholestrol” Stone explains). Castro jokes that he can just see the headlines: “Oliver Stone smuggles Viagra to Castro.”Stone also gets Castro talking about which movie stars he likes (Sophia Loren and Brigitte Bardot, while he counts G?rd Depardieu as a friend).

He asks him about his ex-wife Mirta Diaz-Balart (who now lives in Spain), and the 76-year-old’s feet go into shuffle overdrive. Questions about his former comrade and lover Celia Sanchez, who died in 1980, cause even more consternation “He was great about sex, wasn’t he?” Stone asks me “I loved the way he talked about women It was so old fashioned, so chivalric. You could see here was this great womaniser, so pictured, and here is a guy saying, ‘I only married one time.’ It was clear [he didn't want to talk any more about it]. He didn’t talk much but it was in the body language.”It’s at that point in the movie that Stone mentions that Castro reminds him of his father’s generation. Did he remind him of his father in other ways? “Exactly,” he nods, although he’s not going to give too much away about himself either on this point.

“Especially the way he looked at his interpreter Julianna when I asked him: ‘You love her [Julianna], don’t you?’ His reaction was exactly like the way my father would react, like ‘I don’t really love your mother and why do you raise that?’ So shy!”In the movie, Castro asks Stone about his combat experience in Vietnam and for once its Stone who’s shy with him. Maybe it was his experience as a soldier that won Castro over Plus, “he knew my work,” he says. “I think Platoon might have been the one he liked most, because he still considers himself very much a soldier and prides himself on the guerrilla warfare, but in terms of the interview I think the key was that I wrote him a four-page letter precisely detailing what I wanted to do Perhaps timing was an issue Perhaps he liked me and trusted me not to distort his words. You know,” he says, mock-threatenly, “that happens a lot, the distortion.”In the film, Castro flatly denies torture happens in Cuba.

Perhaps he believes it, the way he seems to believe they have hardly any prostitutes either. (At one point, boasting of the triumphs of the country’s education system, Castro asserts that “even our prostitutes are university graduates.”) Did Stone always believe him?”You know that’s not ultimately relevant,” he asserts “What’s important is to look for yourself and judge Evasion is in the eye of the beholder. You know frankly I’ve done too many movies, and U-Turn comes to mind, about people who are deluded We’re all deluded We all think we’re better than ourselves. What I love about Fidel is his morality, his sense of determination and will. The media distortion of Fidel Castro in America would be enough to drive any movie director nuts. It’s almost like he’s a paedophile or something….”He sighs.