The Miami Film Festival announced the winners of its 39th annual edition last night, which included many Latin American selections including the Haitian film Freda by Géssica Généus and the Dominican-Argentine film Carajita by Silvina Schnicer and Ulises Porra Guardiola, which took home the top prizes.
Having its U.S. premiere at this year’s Miami Film Festival, Généus’s debut feature won the $25,000 Knight Marimbas Award, supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, an international competition for new narrative feature films that best exemplify richness and resonance for cinema’s future. The film tells the story of Freda, who lives with her family in a poor neighborhood of Port-au-Prince. They make ends meet thanks to their small street shop. Faced with precarious living conditions and the rise of violence in Haiti, each of them wonders whether to stay or leave. Freda wants to believe in the future of her country.
Additionally, the jury gave a couple of special recognition to Mexican actor Haztin Navarrete from Lorenzo Vigas’s The Box / La caja and Brazilian actress Mari Oliveira from Anita Rocha da Silveira’s Medusa “for two magnetic performances.”
The Dominican film Carajita was presented the $10,000 HBO Ibero-American Feature Film Award. Directed by Argentine filmmakers Schnicer and Porra Guardiola, the film tells the story of Sara and her nanny Yarisa, who have a relationship that transcends class and race differences: it can best be described as a mother-daughter relationship; but an accident will test their intimate loyalty, and the innocent illusion that they will never separate.
Two Latinx directors were the winners of the Knight Made in MIA Film Award, presented to three films that have a substantial portion of their content in South Florida and that best utilize their story and theme for universal resonance: Cuban-born director Juan Luis Matos won the $30,000 first prize in the competition for his short film You Can Always Come Home, while Mariana Serrano took home the $10,000 third prize for her short film Un pequeño corte.
Other Latinx and Latin American winners include Mexican musician Felipe Pérez Santiago, composer of Carlos Cuarón's Amalgama, who won the Alacran Music in Film Award, highlighting the power of music and film and celebrates the role of the film composerl and NYC-based Puerto Rican filmmaker Ricardo Varona who won the $10,000 WarnerMedia OneFifty Latino Short Film Award for his film Hector’s Woman / La mujer de Héctor. Three other runner-up shorts received $1,250 each: Chilly & Milly, It’s Not Her (No Es Ella, For Some Horses (Por unos caballos), and The Year of the Radio / El año del radio.”
Additionally, The Originals by Cristina Costantini and Alfie Koetter wont the Miami Short Documentary Film Award, with a cash prize of $500; Fernando Lamuño's romatic comedy Cariño won the Audience Short Film Award; and the Best Poster Award was presented to the Dominican film Parsely / Perejil designed by Nate Biller of Jump Cut, and the Chilean thriller Immersion, designed by Sander Brouwer.
The 39th annual edition of the Miami Film Festival, presented by Miami Dade College, ran in a hybrid version March 4-13.
