Hemingway & Gellhorn is a 2012 television film directed by Philip Kaufman about the lives of journalist Martha Gellhorn and her husband, writer Ernest Hemingway. The film premiered at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival and aired on HBO on May 28, 2012. Plot This drama tells the story of one of America’s most famous literary couples. The film begins in 1936, when the pair meet for the first time in a chance encounter in a Key West bar in Florida. They encounter one another once again a year later in Spain, while both are covering the Spanish Civil War, and staying in the same hotel on the same floor. Initially, Gellhorn resists romantic advances made by the famous Hemingway, but during a bombing raid, the two find themselves trapped alone in the same room, and they are overcome by lust. They become lovers, and stay in Spain until 1939. Hemingway collaborates with Joris Ivens to produce The Spanish Earth. In 1940 Hemingway divorces his second wife so that he and Gellhorn can be married. He credits her with having inspired him to write the novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), and dedicates the work to her. Over time, however, Gellhorn becomes more prominent in her own right, leading to certain career jealousies between the two. Gellhorn leaves Hemingway to go to Finland to cover the Winter War by herself. When she returns to the Lookout Farm in Havana, Hemingway tells her that he has divorced Pauline. The two marry and, together, travel to China to cover the bombing attacks by Japan. In China, they interview Chiang Kai-shek and his spouse. Gellhorn is horrified after visiting an opium den. Chiang Kai-shek is fighting the Chinese Communists and Japanese invaders. The two secretly visit Zhou Enlai. Gellhorn covered D-Day in Normandy. She reported on the Dachau and Auschwitz concentration camps. Lastly, in 1945, Gellhorn became the only one of Hemingway's four wives to ask him for a divorce. Cast Nicole Kidman as Martha Gellhorn Clive Owen as Ernest Hemingway David Strathairn as John Dos Passos Molly Parker as Pauline Pfeiffer Parker Posey as Mary Welsh Hemingway Rodrigo Santoro as Paco Zarra (based on José Robles) Mark Pellegrino as Max Eastman Peter Coyote as Maxwell Perkins Lars Ulrich as Joris Ivens Robert Duvall as General Petrov Tony Shalhoub as Mikhail Koltsov Leonard Apeltsin as Russian Operative Jeffrey Jones as Charles Colebaugh Santiago