Films on Little Haiti gentrification and Cuba in the ’90s win big at Miami Film Festival

The biggest winners at Miami Dade College’s Miami Film Festival this year are the city’s Caribbean communities.

“Mountains,” an acclaimed slice-of-life film about gentrification in Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood, won the Made In MIA Feature Film Award along with a $25,000 prize at the festival’s award ceremony April 13. “Los Frikis,” a gut-wrenching film set in Cuba during the Special Period of the ‘90s, won the festival’s coveted Marimbas Award. The Miami Film Festival, which featured several locally made films, ran from April 5 to 14.

Other award winners include Alessandra Lacorazza’s “In The Summers,” which nabbed the $10,000 Jordan Ressler First Feature Award, and Miguel Angel Ferrer’s “The Shadow of the Sun,” which won the Audience Feature Film Award.

The Made In MIA award is the latest in a slew of recognition and high profile screenings for Miami-based filmmaker Monica Sorelle and her film “Mountains.” Sorelle and producer Robert Colom made the film with the help of a $50,000 grant from local nonprofit Oolite Arts’ Cinematic Arts Residency.

Sorelle’s feature directorial debut has already made a splash in the film festival circuit after it premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival last year. The film has won several awards at festivals, including BlackStar, New Orleans Film Festival, Indie Memphis, New Hampshire Film Festival. And Sorelle won the Someone To Watch Award and a $25,000 grant at the Film Independent Spirit Awards in February.

Critics have compared the meditative, intimate work to the likes of 2019’s “The Last Black Man In San Francisco,” 1960’s “A Raisin in the Sun,” and of course, Barry Jenkins’ Oscar-winning “Moonlight.” The Hollywood Reporter called it “quietly beautiful.” Maybe “Mountains” is the next big thing to come out of Miami’s filmmaking scene.

The film follows loveable yet stoic Xavier, a Haitian demolition worker and family man. He realizes his demolition sites are inching closer and closer to his already changing Little Haiti neighborhood, and his loyalties are tested. Sorelle was inspired to make the film when she noticed a demolition worker walk from a work site into the Wynwood residential neighborhood down the street, likely where he lived.

The film’s screening at the Miami Film Festival was a highly anticipated homecoming, Colom said. He and Sorelle were nervous to finally show the film to its intended audience, but clearly they had very little to worry about. The filmmakers received a standing ovation from the audience before the movie even started.

“The Miami screening at the tail end of our festival life for the movie is really beautiful,” Colom told the Herald. “This is the craziest thing that’s ever happened to us.”

Though nothing is set in stone just yet, the “Mountains” team is working on a theatrical release in Miami by the end of the year, Sorelle said. The film’s reception at the festival has left her even more hopeful for its future.

“Every step of this whole process has been a surprise,” she said. “I’m really thankful that the Miami community responded above and beyond to it. I’m excited to get it into theaters and expand the audience so they can continue to see Miami as they know it.”

Directors Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz were also moved by the Miami audience’s reaction to their film “Los Frikis,” which won a $20,000 prize with the Marimbas Award.

Shot in the Dominican Republic, “Los Frikis” is set in ‘90s Cuba during a severe economic crisis. In the film, which is based on true events, punk rock bandmates purposefully inject themselves with HIV to live at an idyllic government-run treatment center. The friends believed a cure for the disease would be found before it was too late. The film is beautiful, and ultimately, heartbreaking.

Nilson and Schwartz expressed gratitude for not just winning the award, but for the enthusiastic response it received from the Miami audience. The crowd did not shy away from laughing, cheering and crying throughout the film.

Some ushers and security guards who grew up in Havana approached the filmmakers with tears in their eyes after the screening, Schwartz said. They told the directors it was the first time they’ve seen the people they left behind in Cuba depicted on screen.

“The goal with this one has always been to collaborate with actors and producers from Cuba and to really create that space for them to tell their story,” Schwartz said. “To hear that it landed with the Miami audience was extra special, probably more special than if it had been at a giant festival like Cannes or Sundance, because this audience is the one that matters to us the most. This is the one that we were really trying to be authentic for.”

James Woolley, the Miami Film Festival executive director, said the “Los Frikis” screening “felt like magic was in the air.” This year’s festival signaled a terrific year for Miami and Caribbean cinema, he said.

“Something great is happening at this moment,” Woolley said. “We’re really happy that these folks have something to say, and that this city really responded to what they had to say. We know that these films will have success across the world.”

Here’s a list of the 2024 Miami Film Festival award winning films and directors:

• Made in MIA Feature Film Award: “Mountains” by Monica Sorelle

• Marimbas Award: “Los Frikis” by Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz

• Jordan Ressler First Feature Award: “In The Summers” by Alessandra Lacorazza
  
  

• Audience Feature Film Award: “The Shadow of the Sun” by Miguel Angel Ferrer.

• Documentary Achievement Award: “Daughters” by Angela Patton and Natalie Rae

• Audience Documentary Film Award: “Skywalkers: A Love Story” by Jeff Zimbalist and Maria Bukhonina.

• Made in MIA Short Film Award: “Konpa” directed by Al’lkens Plancher.

• Miami International Short Film: “The Anne Frank Gift Shop” directed by Mickey Rapkin.

• Short Documentary Film Award: “Audio & The Alligator” by Andrés I. Estrada.

• Reel South Short Award: “Over the Wall” by Krystal Tingle.

• The Cinemaslam Competition Award: “Retrospection Of a Home (once upon a time)“ by Sebastian Marcano-Perez.

• Audience Short Film Award: “Objects of Desire” by Alejandro Renteria.

This story was produced with financial support from individuals and Berkowitz Contemporary Arts in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners, as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The Miami Herald maintains full editorial control of this work.