The curtain rises on the Miami Film Festival Thursday night. One of the entries in the Documentary Short category tells the story of a shipwreck sometimes called the “Titanic of Cuba,” or in this case, “The Poor Man’s Titanic,” the title of the film.

“Diving here comes with reverence and respect, the death toll here, at close to 500, is among the top fifty all-time recorded maritime disasters,” Kerry Sanders says in the film.

The former NBC News correspondent is the writer and narrator of the project. The film shows captivating underwater video of the wreckage of the S.S. Valbonera, a site only a handful of people have seen, even though it lies in only 25 feet of water, between Key West and the Dry Tortugas. 

“This is an untold story,” Sanders told NBC6.

“The Poor Man’s Titanic” is shining a light on a tragedy that had been relegated to the obscure footnotes of history. 

“We made people aware of a wreck that not a lot of people knew about,” said videographer and producer of the film, Mike Zimmer. 

An essential element of the project was seeing the wreck first-hand by diving on it. Zimmer says none of the diving outfitters in Key West had even heard of the Valbonera. However, an underwater archaeologist from NOAA has been studying the Valbonera and accompanied Zimmer and Sanders to the site. 

“It’s one thing for me to tell you the story, but when you see it, your eyes open up and you’re like, wow!” Sanders said. 

On its final voyage in 1919, the Valbonera was packed with immigrants from the Canary Islands, heading to Cuba, but instead of hitting an iceberg as the Titanic did, this ship hit a hurricane. The captain was denied entrance into the port of Havana and told to ride out the storm at sea; however, in his search for deep water, the ship hit a sandbar. 

“So for all the people on board, there was probably no time to prepare, no time to look and see this doesn’t look good, let’s man the lifeboats, they didn’t have any of that time, that thing basically hit that shoal and probably just tore apart,” Zimmer said, judging from the way steel beams were twisted in the wreckage. 

Not a single body was ever recovered, and the wreckage symbolizes the unbearable price some people pay for daring to dream of a better life. 

“This immigrant experience, that we have seen so much of in the news lately, it’s been going on for a long time, different reasons, different sets of circumstances, but hopes and desires and dreams, sadly today as well as then, sometimes end fatally,” Sanders said.

Inspired, Sanders says, by journalist Mirta Ojito’s fictionalized account of the Valbonera disaster, “Deeper Than the Ocean,” “The Poor Man’s Titanic” premieres April 16 at the film festival. It will also soon be shown on the Discovery Channel.