We are honoured to introduce the jury members who will be judging the narrative films in competition at ttff/22: head of diversity and inclusion at the European Film Market (Berlinale), Themba Bhebhe; filmmaker Laura Amelia Guzmán; writer Ayanna Lloyd Banwo. They hail from Europe and the Caribbean and are industry leaders in their specific fields.

Films in juried competitions are rigorously discussed and dissected before being selected by the programming team, and must be unanimously agreed by the five programmers. The shortlisted films then move to the juries which are given a list of criteria on which they must score each film. Films are then watched, scored and debated by the relevant jury, with the winning films ultimately being those which receive the highest aggregate scores. All the winners will be announced at the ttff/22 awards, 27 September.

Themba Bhebhe
After working for a decade in international film sales, Themba has been in charge of Diversity & Inclusion at the European Film Market (Berlinale) since the autumn of 2017. His work comprises curating a series of events on inclusion, equity and accessibility at the EFM’s Industry Sessions and liaising with community-based film organisations and advocacy groups whose policies also strive towards greater inclusivity in the film sector. Founded with Dok Leipzig’s Nadja Tennstedt, Themba also co-manages the EFM’s Doc and Fiction Toolbox Programmes for marginalised and Global South film producers as well as the EFM (Online) Market Badge Inclusion Initiative. Within the framework of this role, he also works in close collaboration with imagineNATIVE and a host of other Indigenous-led film organisations regarding, in particular, the Native Indigenous Cinema Stand and the Native Fellows Programme at the EFM. Themba is also one of the founding members of the Programmers of Colour Collective (POC2) that aims at working towards a more diverse and inclusive programming pool at international film festivals through research, awareness events, networking, profile raising, mentoring and shadowing. Alongside Chloë Walters-Wallace, Themba co-founded the Caribbean Film Academy, an initiative of Third Horizon that aims at introducing filmmakers from across the Caribbean region and its diaspora to burgeoning new resources in order to further their access to the film landscape. Themba is a mentor for Durban FilmMart’s Pitching and Financing Forum, where he has advised long-feature fiction projects from across the African continent.

Laura Amelia Guzmán
Laura Amelia Guzmán is a filmmaker from the Dominican Republic. She completed film studies at San Antonio de los Baños Film School in Cuba (EICTV) and Fine Arts at Altos de Chavón School of Design. Her work has been featured at festivals including Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), Venice Film Festival and Rotterdam International Film Festival. Living between Mexico and DR for the past ten years, Laura produces and directs documentaries and scripted features. Her first feature, ‘Cochochi’, won the Discovery award at TIFF in 2007 and marks the beginning of her collaboration with Israel Cárdenas as co-director. ‘Jean Gentil’ followed in (2010), ‘Carmita’ (2013), ‘Sand Dollars’ (2014), ‘Sambá’ (2017), ‘Noelí Overseas’ (2017) and ‘Holy Beasts’ (2019). She is currently in  postproduction of a new feature, ‘La Hembrita’ (2023). Laura is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Ayanna Lloyd Banwo
Ayanna Lloyd Banwo is a writer from Trinidad + Tobago currently living in London, United Kingdom. Her debut novel When We Were Birds is an Indie Next Pick and has been named one of the UK Observer’s Best Debuts of 2022. She is a graduate of the University of the West Indies and holds an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia, where she is now a Creative and Critical Writing PhD student. Her work has been published in Moko Magazine, Small Axe, PREE, Callaloo and Anomaly among others, and shortlisted for Small Axe Literary Competition and the Wasafiri New Writing Prize. She is currently at work on her second novel.

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

The short fiction film The Resort, directed by Shadae Lamar Smith, and the fiction feature Sand Dollars, directed by Israel Cárdenas and Laura Amelia Guzmán and winner of the Best Fiction Feature prize at the ttff/15, screened at the Festival last Thursday 24 September. Our blogger, Aurora Herrera, attended the screening, where Smith and Guzmán were present.

The Resort comprises a series of three vignettes that follow a young Tobagonian man as he sells love for a living. The film, directed by Shadae Lamar Smith, had its international premiere at the ttff/15.

Smith was born in Miami to Jamaican parents. He has a BA in Theatre from Fordham University in New York City, and is completing an MFA in Film Production from UCLA. The Resort is Lamar’s final project for his programme at UCLA. He explained that he had heard about sex tourism in his parents’ native country of Jamaica, and in Trinidad and Tobago.

“It’s a topic that I’m definitely interested in because when people talk about sex tourism it’s really focused on women and I think that it’s a big issue for men too,” he said. “When I first came here to Trinidad and Tobago, I heard about how it was affecting not only these men but the families associated with these men, especially with regards to STDs being on the rise.”

When asked why he didn’t probe deeply into the emotions of the male protagonist, Smith responded by saying that given that it was a 15-minute film, he felt that he did not have the time to give the issue its proper status.

“I thought it was an extremely complex issue and I think that was not something that could have been presented in 15 minutes of film,” he said. “So I said, let me take more of a clinical approach and have people draw their own conclusions based on that. I’m showing pretty much glimpses into this life instead of trying to give you this deep nuanced approach in 15 minutes.”

The film, which was shot on 16mm film, was dappled with wonderful bursts of colour, giving it a raw and vibrant ambience. The wide shots of the landscapes in and around Arnos Vale and Pigeon Point in Tobago were visually enticing.

“I didn’t look at directors first,” Smith said, of his influences. “I looked more to Caribbean art and the way the more colourful pieces and landscape pieces were presented and that’s how I designed my look. Then from there I looked at directors. I looked at the director of The Harder the Come [Perry Henzell], they shot on 16mm and I wanted to shoot on 16mm as well. I like the way that colour is represented in the 16mm format.”

The film, which was shot in conjunction with the Tobago House of Assembly, obliged their request that the cast be at least 75% from the isles of Trinidad and Tobago. The local cast featured Shea Best, Aleem Marcus Valentine and Cassandra Bonaparte and Stephen Hadeed Jr.

“This was amazing because I wasn’t going to fly people over here form the US to shoot a film,” Smith said. “It was too much money and it loses some kind of authenticity.”

*****

Sand Dollars has gravitas. Inspired by the novel of the same name by Jean Noel Pancrazi, the film explores the relationship between Noelí (Yanet Mojíca), a young, impoverished Dominican woman and Anne (Geraldine Chaplin), a much older and richer French woman. Their interaction unfolds against the backdrop of Las Terrenas, a gorgeous, verdant tourist haven in the Dominican Republic. After three years, Anne is unconditionally in love with Noelí, even though she is aware that Noelí is using her for financial support. Cárdenas and Guzmán are sensitive in their portrayal of the complicated exchanges between the native and the visitor, allowing the audience to experience the deeper layers of these relationships without the garish use of words like prostitution and solicitation.

The film—which has been submitted by the Dominican Republic to the Academy Awards for best foreign language film—is beautiful. I was captivated from the very first frame, where we see the bachata musician Ramon Cordero plaintively singing the song “I Live in Grief”. This underscored my expectations of the emotional resonance of the film and for sure, Cárdenas’s and Guzmán’s work is remarkable. While one would assume that a serious relationship between these two women would be delusional given the contrasts between them, the co-directors’ brilliantly sew gentle hope into the story, suggesting that it is possible the Noelí has feelings for Anne as well.

Here is an excerpt of the Q&A session with Guzmán.

How did the idea [for the film] come about? Did you first read the book and decide that you wanted to make a film, or did an idea come to you before you read the book?

It was two things. The genesis of the film was first the place. We usually think about where we want to shoot before we think of the story or the characters. My husband who directs with me, Israel Cárdenas, is from northern Mexico and I’m from the Dominican Republic so we have to choose where we want to shoot our next project. We shot Jean Gentil (Best Fiction Feature, ttff/11) in the northern part of the DR. I’ve seen it develop from a fishing town and now it’s one of the most touristic places in the DR. French, Italians, Germans, Haitians all mix there. We were sure when we found the book we would read it with double interest. It took some time for us to discover our own feelings about the book. I sort of related to the foreigners’ point of view more than to the locals’ and I asked [myself] if I was like a foreigner in my own country. This made me very curious to direct this film.

The second thing was the music. Bachata music is the soul, the roots of Dominican music. It’s like an interpretation of bolero that Dominicans from the countryside play. In Spanish we say the word despecho, which means “a torn heart” and it refers to men who have been treated badly by women and they want to complain but it is something that can be danced and I thought that that is very much like the Dominican people where something terrible can be happening but they have a smile on their face.

The main characters in the book are men but in the film they are women.

That took a while to happen. We did write the first, second and third [drafts of the script] based on the novel and when we heard that Geraldine Chaplin liked Jean Gentil, we suggested that she would do a secondary role [in Sand Dollars]. Then we thought, “Why keep looking for an older male actor when [we] have an older French woman?” So we said, “Let’s change the script and see what happens.” We did it and we were empowered with the script and felt that now it’s now our story.

[Geraldine] Chaplin visually looks like death; she is so stark. You almost have a visceral reaction when you see them together.

This was something that we had in mind from the beginning. We talked about the dying animal. She looks sick and her days are counted and the girl is sort of the contrary. She is alive, she is beautiful, and she is shining.

I felt sadness watching this film. You can see that Chaplin is torn about the girl. What were you hoping audiences would feel from watching this film?

Every audience sees the film in a different way depending on the baggage that they carry, so depending on what you’ve lived you will see it one way. So there is no one specific message.

How does the film impact you?

It is hard to say how it impacts me because I have made it, I heave crafted every piece of it, Israel and I. Time will tell. I need more distance.

You can see The Resort and Sand Dollars again on Tue 29 September, 6.00pm, at MovieTowne POS.

Sand Dollars, the tender story of an elderly French woman in a relationship with a much younger woman from the Dominican Republic, won the Best Fiction Feature prize last evening at the awards ceremony for the 2015 trinidad+tobago film festival (ttff/15).

Directed by Israel Cárdenas and Laura Amelia Guzmán, the film beat three other films in the official competition to nab the coveted prize.

The Best Documentary Feature went to Aleksandra Maciuszek’s Casa Blanca, the moving tale of an elderly woman and her middle-aged son who has Down syndrome, as they navigate daily life in Havana.

Casa Blanca also received a special mention for artistic merit by the Amnesty International Human Rights Prize jury.

In the Trinidad and Tobago film categories, Sean Hodgkinson’s Trafficked, about three friends on holiday who become drug mules, walked away with the Best Fiction Feature prize, while Kim Johnson’s Re-percussions: An African Odyssey, about attempts to propagate T&T’s national instrument in Nigeria, won Best Documentary Feature.

The prize for best project at the first ever Caribbean Film Mart went to Kidnapping Inc of Haiti, by Gaethan Chancy, Bruno Mourral and Gilbert Mirambeau, Jr.

Here is a full list of the awards:

Best Film Awards – sponsored by the National Gas Company of Trinidad and Tobago Limited
Best Fiction Feature: Sand Dollars, Israel Cárdenas and Laura Amelia Guzmán, Dominican Republic/Mexico/Argentina
Best Documentary Feature: Casa Blanca, Aleksandra Maciuszek, Cuba/Mexico/Poland
Best Short Film, Narrative: Mommy Water, Julien Silloray, Guadeloupe
Best Short Film, Documentary: Papa Machete, Jonathan David Kane, Haiti/USA/Barbados

Best Trinidad and Tobago Film Awards – sponsored by the Film Company of Trinidad and Tobago (FilmTT)
Best Trinidad and Tobago Fiction Feature: Trafficked, Sean Hodgkinson
Best Trinidad and Tobago Documentary Feature: Re-percussions: An African Odyssey, Kim Johnson
Best Trinidad and Tobago Short Film, Fiction: Fade to Black, Christopher Guinness
Best Trinidad and Tobago Short Film, Documentary: Riding Bull Cart, Rhonda Chan Soo

People’s Choice Awards – Sponsored by Flow
People’s Choice Award, Best Narrative Feature: Sally’s Way, Joanne Johnson, T&T
People’s Choice Award, Best Documentary Feature: Vanishing Sail, Alexis Andrews, Antigua
People’s Choice Award, Best Short Film: City on the Hill, Patricia Mohammed and Michael Mooleedhar, T&T

Amnesty International Human Rights Prize: My Father’s Land, Miquel Galofré and Tyler Johnston, Bahamas/Haiti/Trinidad and Tobago

Amnesty International Human Rights Prize, Special Mention for Artistic Merit: Casa Blanca, Aleksandra Maciuszek, Cuba/Mexico/Poland

RBC: Focus Filmmakers’ Immersion Pitch Prize: Kojo McPherson, Guyana

Caribbean Film Mart Best Project Award: Kidnapping Inc, Gaethan Chancy, Bruno Mourral, Gilbert Mirambeau, Jr

Best Emerging Trinidad and Tobago Filmmaker (prize sponsored by bpTT): Michael Rochford

BPTT Youth Jury Prize for Best Film: Girlhood, Céline Sciamma, France

BPTT Youth Jury Prize Honourable Mention: Güeros, Alonzo Ruizpalacios, Mexico

BPTT Youth Jury Prize, Special Mention for Cinematography: The Greatest House in the World, Ana V. Bojórquez and Lucía Carreras, Guatemala/Mexico

Image: A still from Sand Dollars