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For the next 10 days, Miami will be known for sun, sea – and cinema.
The 42nd annual Miami Film Festival got underway Thursday night and before it wraps on Sunday, April 13, it will have presented almost 200 narrative, documentary and short films, hailing from 45 countries. The program includes 35 world premieres.
The festival kicked off with the Florida premiere of Meet the Barbarians (Les Barbares), the latest film directed by Julie Delpy. The French actor-filmmaker was expected to be on hand for the event – as well as for a 30th anniversary screening of Before Sunrise today – but as Deadline reported, she was just cast in Ruben Östlund’s upcoming movie The Entertainment System Is Down.
“We’re obviously very sad that [Julie] can’t join us tonight,” MFF Director of Programming Lauren Cohen told the audience at the Olympia Theater. “She really, really wanted to be here… She was so, so sad to miss it because the festival means a lot to her, this film means a lot to her.”
Delpy’s comedy is set in a town in France’s Brittany region that is expecting to receive a group of Ukrainian refugees. The plot thickens when Syrian migrants show up instead. In his opening remarks Thursday night, festival executive director James Woolley highlighted work from a bit closer to home.
“We also want to showcase as much South Florida content as possible on the big screen,” he said. “Miami has so many different characters, so many big characters who deserve to be on screens. And that is our tagline for the year, that we have big characters from all sorts of our movies.”
By way of example, Woolley cited El Sonido de Miami, a documentary directed by Emilio Oscar Alcalde that makes its world premiere at the festival. The film “is a love letter to the Cuban immigrants who were trying to find their place in Miami, assimilating to American culture, all while maintaining their roots,” according to the festival program. “The music they created is a fusion of cultures that could only happen in Miami.”
El Sonido de Miami premieres Thursday, April 10 at the Miami Beach Bandshell, with filmmaker Emilio Oscar Alcalde, producer Eloy Cepero, and WDNA radio personality Viviám Maria Lopez expected to be in attendance. Carlos Oliva y Los Sobrinos del Juez will perform as a part of the event.
El Sonido de Miami is one of nine narrative and documentary features in the running for the festival’s Made in MIA Award, “a competition for jury-selected films of any genre that features a qualitatively and quantitatively substantial portion of its content (story, setting and actual filming location) in South Florida (Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and/or Monroe counties) and that best utilizes its story and theme for universal resonance.” The Python Hunt, a documentary directed by Xander Robin about efforts to rid the Florida Everglades of an invasive reptile, and A Weird Kind of Beautiful, a drama directed by Gabriel Mayo, are among the other contenders for the Made in MIA award. It comes with a prize of a Panavision equipment rental package worth $60,000.
MFF also offers the $15,000 Marimbas Award, “an international competition for new narrative feature films that best exemplify richness and resonance for cinema’s future.” Nineteen films from around the world, including Delpy’s Meet the Barbarians, are up for that prize.
Lauren Cohen, the program director, said Julie Delpy will be invited back to Miami to receive her Festival Impact Award. In addition, several other industry notables will be honored, including Oscar-winning filmmaker Roger Ross Williams, who will receive the Impact Award. MFF is screening his Emmy-nominated documentary Stamped From the Beginning, an innovative Netflix film based on the book by Dr. Ibram X. Kendi (coincidentally or otherwise, Dr. Kendi’s book, which examines the history and impact of racist ideology in America, has been banned by many schools in Florida).
The Miami Film Festival is a program of Miami Dade College, which also puts on the Miami Film Festival GEMS event, scheduled for November of this year. MFF, running April 3-13, is expected to attract 45,000 audience members and more than 400 filmmakers, producers, talent and industry professionals.
James Woolley, the festival executive director, was appointed to his position in 2023 as Miami and other cinematic events began to emerge from the Covid pandemic. Speaking at the opening night screening on Thursday, he said the festival is moving in the right direction.
“I’m so pleased to see everybody here,” he told the audience, “and to say that the Miami Film Festival continues to grow.”
