In partnership with Miami Dade College’s Miami Film Festival, this program provides filmmakers the opportunity to take one-on-one meetings with industry expert to help further projects they are actively developing.
Meet the Mentors & Filmmakers from our past sessions
Mentors
Jennifer Orta Castellanos
Films & Filmmakers
Lila the Good Niña - Xavier Serrano
Narrative Feature –
Lila, an outcast, thirteen-year-old girl from South Florida has just discovered she was born in Puerto Rico. For Lila, this is shocking news, given that she has zero Latin connections in her life. With the help of a thirteen year old Puerto Rican boy, Lila runs away from her foster care, and will try to return to her original birth land.
Untitled Feature Film - Alfredo Hueck
Narrative Feature –
Edgardo, a workaholic who dedicated 50 years of his life to a TV channel, literally without leaving his premises, tries to recover his life as fast as possible before being completely forgotten.
Wastelands - Michael Ruiz-Unger
Narrative Feature –
A down-and-out punk has the worst twenty-four hours of his life when he loses a prized guitar he was selling in order to leave town for good.
Turkey - Noah Salzman
Narrative Feature –
A catastrophic event traps the staff of a small town bowling alley and its customers inside during a heatwave. Can they overcome the rising tensions, temperatures and traumas while waiting for help to come, if it ever does?
Abuela Goes to Art Basel - Olivia Sanchez
Narrative Short Series –
In her search to find a boyfriend and feel beautiful, 65-year-old Abuela glams up and ventures out of her stuffy efficiency in Hialeah. When she finds herself amidst the glamorous and confusing world of Art Basel in Miami Beach, she must confront her own feelings of inferiority.
Madame Newton du Chatelet - Katrina Morris
Narrative Feature –
Émilie du Châtelet becomes more devoted to science than to her lover, Voltaire, and struggles to finish her life’s work before she is consumed by the obligations of her station.
Last Month - Abby Pan
Narrative Short – Last month explores the story of an immigrant Chinese family in Hialeah that face eviction from their restaurant due to financial struggles. As the family navigates the possibility of losing their entire livelihood, they must make a decision on whether to spend all of their savings on rent, or use the funds to spend one last weekend together as a family.
Barton Creek - Carlos V. Gutierrez
Narrative Feature – Based On A True Story. An immigrant with a penchant for fighting & taking on those bigger than him is falsely imprisoned for life and must find unorthodox ways to prove his innocence.
Boom - Eric Gaunaurd & Jokes Yanes
Narrative Feature – In Miami 1991, four teenage misfit graffiti bombers risk it all on an all night journey through the most unforgiving obstacles in hopes of seeing their names shine on the walls of a legendary run-down building known as “The Penit”, the ultimate spot for a graffiti artist.
Fair Winds - Danny Duffy & Meredith Vey
Narrative Series – When an underprivileged teen gets recruited for youth sailing, she must confront the malintentions of her wealthy peers—and the secret of her birth—without bowing under the pressure of her new place at the helm.
Waiting for Snow in Havana - Abre Camino Collective - Vanessa Garcia & Victoria Collado
Narrative Feature – This is the adaptation of the National Award Winning book “Waiting for Snow in Havana,” following one person’s story through Operation Pedro Pan, the largest exodus of unaccompanied youth in the Western Hemisphere to date.
Detras de la Fachada - Juan Luis Matos
Narrative Short – Nadia is a Black Cuban woman living in Miami who has recently become a real estate agent to try to bring her mother and sister to the United States from Cuba. In multiple desperate entrepreneurial attempts to make the money she needs to get them there, Nadia gets tangled into the suspicious business of her longtime childhood friend Lola.
The Barber - Carlos Gutierrez
Narrative Feature – A former mob enforcer now working as a barber must return to his violent ways when his estranged wife and child are kidnapped.
Flow! - Natalie Birriel & Lin Que Ayoung
Narrative Series – Flow! is a semi-autobiographical dark comedy TV series about my life as a struggling teacher by day who’s an even more struggling comedian by night, think the unfiltered version of Abbot Elementary. This show explores the perseverance and purpose we have to endure in order to express our innermost truth.
Record Man - Pete Capó & Rolando Viñas
Narrative Feature – Based on a true story, we follow Henry Stone as he builds the largest independent label in 1970’s Miami by introducing disco to the world, only to see it come crumbling down in an instant. The life and death of disco.
Cuddles - Janet Carabelli & Paul Seligmann Jordan
Narrative Series – A motley crew of Miami Lesbians ranging in age from 20’s to 60’s is developing a girl-seeking-girl dating app
The Light Box - Amadeus McCaskill
Narrative Short – A couple has purchased a home together and finally moved in. On their way to a Halloween party, they realize there may be an unwanted inhabitant.
Hooky - Princess Usanga
Narrative Short – “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” gone absolutely wrong with Haitian-American and Cuban-American female leads in 1995 in Kendall, Miami.
Over the Tracks - Leandro Linares
Narrative Short – A Miami love story between a girl from NY that comes from wealth and a kid from Overtown. Showing the drastic difference a couple blocks makes. The subliminal idea is to bring awareness to the lack of low income housing in Miami with a realistic love story that could easily happen.
From Brooklyn to Boca -
Deni B. Sher & Sharon Pfeiffer
Narrative Feature – When Regina’s husband decides to rat on his crime family instead of spending twenty years in prison, she agrees to relocate their “real” family via the Witness Protection Program from Brooklyn to Boca, where the not so perfect Catholic family struggles to convince the world they are a near perfect Jewish family.
Saving Shakespeare -
Isabel Bacigalupo
Narrative Feature – An idealistic theater owner is on the verge of losing his theater and makes a desperate move by allowing a reality show producer to take over. He must now make things right if he stands a change of ever getting his theater back.
No Hablo - Ray Downs
Narrative Short – A Latino man in Miami who doesn’t speak Spanish decides to fake it, resulting in massive personal success in his career and love life. But when somebody find out he doesn’t really speak Spanish, he has to find a way to stop his secret from getting out.
At Night We Shine -
Katiana Elena & Ryan Beharry
Documentary Short – A documentary that will authentically tell the stories of diverse individuals and highlight the reality of the disability community, people that have a non-existing representation. Through their day and a night at a festival, the film dives into their past, what makes them unique and their resilience to overcome barriers.
The Betaverse -
Vasisth Sukul & Viv Sanchez
Narrative Short – A young woman afraid of venturing out into the real world discovers that the experiences she has in the metaverse are not as safe as she had thought.
Boom - Jorge Jokes Yanes
Narrative Feature – In Miami 1991, four middle school aged misfit graffiti artist go on the adventure of to reach the mythical “penit” the ultimate fame spot of the era.
Love 40 - Alex Ayala
Narrative Short – Love 40 is about Austin’s Journey in finding the courage to end a toxic relationship. We see how Austin deals with the universal issues that surround love, heart break, healing and growing.
Guerillera -
Pamela Largaespada
Narrative Short – A surrealist short film where we follow a mothering sex worker who has her child taken away and dealing with the impact, the child in the system, and the case worker handling everything, and spiritual deities that are summoned to life.
Nothing About This is Tender
- Carolina Sabrina Caruso
Narrative Feature – After vampire Girasol and her photographer boyfriend Nemo break up over him refusing immortality, they are stuck living out the last two months of their lease together while navigating break up logistics, jealousy, and the love they still share. Think Lost in Translation meets What We do in Shadows.
Project Ballroom -
Freddy Rodriguez
Narrative Feature – It’s 1995 and South Beach is Miami’s gay mecca and when a broken, Latino HIV educator sets out to make a difference, he recruits Miami voguing houses and changes Miami’s voguing scene forever.
Mercy - Maribel Cabrera
Narrative Short – A girl and her father confront the Director of a Mental Health Facility to request security footage.
Success en tu Life -
Isabel Custer
Narrative Feature – A struggling Cuban actress mist choose between her dream of doing a Shakespeare remix in Miami or acting in a career making series. Or fail miserably about everything. A story of our notions of success and getting over fear of failure.
The Last Party Girl -
Claudia Elena Rodriguez
Narrative Feature – Jo embarks on a weekend-long odyssey through Miami’s underground art world in search of drugs and house music to satiate all of the hedonistic urges before Monday’s AA meeting.
Sounds Like Home -
Nerissa Street
Documentary Series – While the world moves towards streaming radio, podcasts and on demand music, South Florida immigrants count on broadcast stations to keep them connected to news from home. Meet the charismatic Dons and Donas of this critical media, and find out how they are pivoting to adapt to the new media landscape that has threatened to shutter many of the stations that house their essential broadcasts.
SCUM - Wilhelm Schalaudek
Narrative Short – As he wanders the streets of Miami searching for his missing partner, a homeless man suffers from an existential crisis.
EL Socio - Gabriel de Varona
Narrative Feature – A stranger visits a family in Miami claiming to be an old friend of their recently deceased grandfather from Cuba. He gains their trust sharing old family history, but as supernatural occurrences begin to change their lives, they slowly discover the stranger is not what he seems.
