His father, Manuel Ángel Daranas Valdés (1934-2000) was an actor, teacher and writer who gained national recognition as the author of the adventure radio series La flecha de cobre (The copper arrow), an audience success that was on the air for nearly a decade in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

[12] In the early 90's, Daranas achieved recognition for his radio soap operas addressing contemporary Cuban society in the context of the Special Period.

[13] His directorial debut in television was in 1999–2000 with La tierra más hermosa (The loveliest land), a series of 12 documentaries co-directed with Rolando Almirante.

[25] In 2012, Daranas wrote and directed Bluechacha, a music EPK for Buena Vista Social Club's Manuel Galbán's last album.

[9][11][28] The film tells the story of Chala, an 11-year-old boy who supports his alcoholic and drug addict mother by breeding pigeons and training fighting dogs.

[33] In 2017, Sergio and Sergei was released, a comedy set in Cuba in 1991, describing the vicissitudes in the friendship between a Cuban ham radio enthusiast and a Soviet cosmonaut, trapped in the Mir space station during the USSR collapse.

At the time, the press called it the first Cuba-USA narrative co-production in over 50 years,[34][35] by virtue of the presence of actor Ron Perlman in the movie and his involvement in its distribution through his indie production company Wing and a Prayer Pictures.

[37] In a poll conducted by Cinema Tropical (the New York-based non-profit media arts organization), both Behavior and Sergio and Sergei were included among the 100 most significant Latin-American films of the 2010-2019 decade.