Caribbean Films In the Spotlight at 39th Annual Miami Film Festival – NBC 6 South Florida

For the next ten days, Miami is becoming the home for filmmakers from more than 35 countries, representing more than 120 films.

According to the festival’s director, Jaie Laplante, the last two festivals were “just the shadow” of what the festival should be.

But the 2022 edition is back in full strength and for the first time ever, the Dominican Republic is getting the spotlight, with five films being featured.

“All the five films are different in a way,” said Andres Farias, who directed “Candela,” one of the featured Dominican films. “You have history, you have a Caribbean pop film, you have a comedy.”

Farias calls “Candela” Caribbean film noir and says the mixture of genres from the selected films is a good symbol of what’s going on in the island, creatively speaking. Laplante agrees.

“The Miami film festival has always been a big proponent of cinema from Latin America,” he said. “We follow trends in international cinema every year. This year, it was just a big breakthrough for the Dominican Republic. We’ve been watching that cinema evolve for the last couple of years. These five films, collectively, made a really strong series. We created the spotlight ‘Quinteto Dominicano’ to celebrate that and to honor this great wave of energy coming from the Dominican Republic.”

The filmmakers from the island attribute the rise of independent film on the island to a tax incentive for creatives.

Pablo Lozano produced “Candela” and he says he’s seen a big jump in productions on the island.

“The country has gone from producing one or two movies a year about ten years ago to producing 20 to 30 movies a year,” he said. “It was a matter of time that this amount of work would result in a development of a voice, the maturity of a voice.”

Lozano adds that universities and schools are nurturing students’ love for filmmaking.

He teaches at INTEC (Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo), which also helped produce “Candela.”

“Initiatives like this in which the academy links to independent film production are very important, and are also the result of the ecosystem we are in right now in the Dominican Republic,” he said.

Both Farias and Lozano say they are excited for the next generation of Dominican filmmakers.