Speaking in Panama City alongside fellow Venezuelan opposition figures, Machado said the opposition remained focused on securing free and fair elections in which Venezuelans both inside and outside the country could participate.

Her comments come more than four months after a major shift in United States policy toward Venezuela, when the administration of Donald Trump moved away from supporting Machado and instead engaged with figures linked to Venezuela’s ruling establishment following the capture of then-president Nicolás Maduro by U.S. forces, according to the source material.

Machado has lived in exile since December after emerging from nearly a year in hiding inside Venezuela and traveling to Norway, where she received the Nobel Peace Prize. She said she hopes to return to her country before the end of next year.

The opposition leader stressed that any credible presidential election would require significant institutional reforms, including the appointment of politically neutral electoral authorities, updated voter registration systems and guarantees allowing opposition candidates to compete without state interference.

According to Machado, organizing a democratic presidential election under such conditions would require between seven and nine months of preparation.

The political timetable remains unclear. Venezuela’s constitution requires a presidential election within 30 days if a president becomes permanently unable to serve, but U.S. officials have recently downplayed expectations for an imminent vote while expressing support for acting president Delcy Rodríguez, whose government has expanded access for American investment in Venezuela’s oil sector amid elevated global energy prices.

Machado emerged as Maduro’s most prominent challenger in recent years but was barred by authorities from contesting the 2024 presidential election. In response, she endorsed former diplomat Edmundo González Urrutia as the opposition’s candidate.

Following that election, authorities aligned with the ruling party declared Maduro the winner shortly after polls closed. However, Machado’s campaign maintained that collected voting records showed González had won by a margin exceeding two-to-one.

Asked about a future presidential contest, Machado said she welcomed competition within the opposition and would be prepared to face any rival in what she described as a transparent and legitimate election.

“I will be a candidate, but there may be others, of course,” Machado told reporters. “I would love to compete with everyone, with anyone who wants to be a candidate.”

Speaking at the White House, Trump said previous administrations had considered action against Cuba for decades and suggested he could be the president to pursue it. While he did not outline specific plans, his remarks marked the latest escalation in Washington’s rhetoric toward the communist-run island.

Rubio, speaking separately in Miami before departing for meetings in Europe and India, said the administration’s preferred outcome remained a negotiated settlement but acknowledged doubts that meaningful progress could be achieved with Cuba’s current leadership.

“The president’s preference is always a negotiated agreement that’s peaceful,” Rubio said, adding that prospects for such an outcome were limited given the current political environment in Havana.

The comments came one day after U.S. federal prosecutors announced an indictment accusing Castro of ordering the 1996 shootdown of civilian aircraft operated by Cuban exiles based in Miami. The charges include murder and destruction of an aircraft. Cuban authorities have rejected the case, with Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel describing it as a political maneuver intended to justify potential aggression against the island.

The indictment has fueled speculation that the Trump administration may be considering a more confrontational approach toward Cuba. Analysts have drawn comparisons to Washington’s earlier operation against Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, who was captured by U.S. forces earlier this year and faces federal criminal charges in the United States.

Senior U.S. officials, including Rubio and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, have held discussions with Cuban representatives in recent months aimed at improving relations. Rubio said those contacts failed to produce meaningful results and contributed to the administration’s decision to impose additional sanctions on Havana.

Among the latest measures are sanctions targeting Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A., a business conglomerate controlled by Cuba’s armed forces. Rubio also announced that a relative of the group’s executive president had been detained by U.S. immigration authorities after her legal residency status was revoked.

The administration argues that Cuba presents a national security challenge because of its security and intelligence ties with China and Russia, as well as its relationships with governments viewed as adversarial by Washington.

China rejected the U.S. position on Thursday. Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said Beijing supports Cuba’s sovereignty and opposes external interference and sanctions.

The heightened tensions come as the U.S. military conducts exercises in the Caribbean involving the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz and accompanying vessels. U.S. Southern Command said the deployments are part of previously scheduled maritime operations with regional partners.

Trump has increasingly linked future relations with Cuba to demands that Havana expand economic openness and reduce ties with U.S. geopolitical rivals, while continuing to tighten sanctions pressure on the island’s government.

Venezuelan-Canadian director Jorge Thielen Armand and Italian actor Asia Argento are using surrealist psychological thriller Death Has No Master to examine questions of ownership, historical violence and inherited trauma against the backdrop of contemporary Venezuela.

Premiering in the Directors’ Fortnight section at Cannes, the film follows Caro, an Italian-Venezuelan woman played by Argento, who returns to Venezuela to reclaim a plantation inherited from her late father. The property remains occupied by caretakers who have continued living on the land, setting up a broader conflict over legitimacy, colonial legacy and power.

“The film has multiple layers of meaning,” Armand said ahead of the premiere. “Recent events only make those multitudes greater.”Armand said the project has taken on additional political resonance following recent developments in Venezuela and increased international involvement in the country.

The director referenced the deployment of US warships near Venezuela in August last year, officially linked by Washington to anti-narcotics operations, as filming began on the project.

He also referred to the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro by US authorities earlier this year amid longstanding allegations of corruption and human rights abuses against his administration.

“It’s very worrisome, what’s happening,” Armand said. “I think that the movie can speak to the collective darkness that Venezuelans feel, and the betrayal of domestic and international systems.”

The film revisits themes Armand previously explored in La Soledad, his 2016 feature debut set during Venezuela’s economic collapse. That earlier project blurred documentary and fiction while focusing on residents occupying a deteriorating mansion formerly owned by Armand’s family.

In Death Has No Master, Armand shifts perspective toward the descendants of property owners returning to spaces shaped by abandonment, displacement and class divisions. The story was partly inspired by recurring dreams the director experienced involving dark buildings, fragmented memories and disorientation.

“When I wake up, I think of home and everything I left behind,” Armand said. “So the film is that nightmare of going back, finding that the people and things you left behind are no longer there.”

The film places colonial imagery alongside modern industrial symbols. Cacao plantations and oil refineries operate as recurring visual motifs, linking Venezuela’s colonial history with contemporary struggles over resources and political control.

Argento described the filming process as emotionally consuming, saying she isolated herself in shooting locations to better inhabit the character’s psychological state.

“I drove myself pretty much insane,” she said. “And I had a lot of fear; something primal; something unspeakable that I think my character felt in going back there.”Argento said Caro’s memories of her abusive father intersected with aspects of her own personal history.

She is the daughter of Italian filmmaker Dario Argento and actor-screenwriter Daria Nicolodi, collaborators behind the influential horror film Suspiria.While Argento declined to detail specific parallels, she said the project resonated with her understanding of family inheritance and emotional trauma.

“It’s dealing with my own nightmares, and my own childhood, and the way I was brought up, and my own blood, and my inheritance,” she said.Argento also noted stylistic similarities between Death Has No Master and the Italian psychological thrillers associated with her parents’ generation of cinema, particularly the visual techniques of 1970s giallo films.

“This is like a serious Italian psychological thriller from the 70s, with the zooms and the way it’s shot,” she said after watching the completed film.

The central conflict of the story unfolds between Caro and Sonia, an Afro-Venezuelan caretaker played by Dogreika Tovar, who lives on the plantation with her son and asserts her own claim to the land.

A third figure, Johnny, an Indigenous associate connected to Caro’s father, further complicates the question of legitimacy.Armand said the film intentionally avoids presenting a clear moral hierarchy among its characters.

“I wanted to make something where nobody is a victim, per se,” he said.

According to the director, the conflict reflects overlapping systems of legality, morality and historical entitlement shaped by colonialism and economic power.

“There’s a legal, moral and historical conflict,” Armand said. “But these are notions that we’ve conceived as a society. In the end, land isn’t owned, ever. It’s just controlled by the use of force. It’s occupied until it’s not.”