Miami Film Festival Wraps 43rd Edition

Cannes and Venice aren’t the only international film festivals with sun, sand, and stars. The Miami Film Festival, which concludes its 43^rd edition tonight, also unspools in an oceanside setting.

The event has become known “for being a great place for filmmakers to join — big name filmmakers, but also filmmakers who are emerging or have been working in the business for a long time,” notes festival executive director James Woolley. “And we show them a good time, and the audience loves to see them. I feel like it’s been building and we can’t wait to see every year who agrees to come down and sit near the beach and have a wonderful weekend. Not exactly difficult.”

ustin Hoffman and Leo Woodall in ‘Tuner’

The festival kicked off with Tuner, starring Leo Woodall and Dustin Hoffman and directed by Oscar winner Daniel Roher, and concludes tonight with an 80^th birthday party tribute to director John Waters, with the iconoclastic filmmaker present. MFF added an extra day this year, extending its length to 11 days.

“The thing behind that is we play so many great movies and we hate scheduling them on top of each other,” Woolley explains. “So, every little opportunity we get to spread it out a bit and let people have their choices be easier is good for us because there’s nothing worse than having too many films you want to see all at the same time. And our audience has gone with us on it. They like the extra time; they’re seeing more films per person and the films are full.”

The festival, a program of Miami Dade College, unspools at several venues in Miami, Miami Beach, and Coral Gables, including the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts a short distance from Biscayne Bay. Among the stars honored this year have been Adam Scott, Emmy winner Bob Odenkirk, Oscar nominee Danielle Brooks, Lili Reinhart, Matt Bomer, and Sesame Street legend Sonia Manzano. Odenkirk came to MFF to present his new action-thriller Normal, and Scott for his horror film Hokum. Festival programmers examine theatrical release schedules with an eye to inviting prominent guests.

“That’s exactly how Adam Scott and Hokum came together,” MFF director of programming Lauren Cohen tells Deadline. “We saw that Hokum has a May 1st release date and said, ‘Okay, early, mid-April is probably in that perfect sweet spot and before they’re fully doing the press stops that the studio needs from them.’ So, this is that really perfect window before they have all these obligations and it’s also something desirable for the studio to get that very well-deserved recognition for the stars. So that’s how it came together for Bob Odenkirk too — Normal comes out this weekend… The timing just is really, really fortuitous that way.”

Manzano, who played “Maria” on Sesame Street for an astounding 44 years, received the festival’s Impact Award. She and director Ernie Busamante were on hand for a screening of his documentary about her, Street Smart: Lessons From a TV Icon.

“I’m very gratified and thrilled to be honored,” Manzano told Deadline shortly before she received her award. “I’ve been honored many times, but this has kind of special meaning for me because more people from the Latin community are honoring me.”

The Miami Film Festival reflects the diversity of its home base and robust Cuban American community by devoting space to many films with Latin American themes or connections. On the slate was A Loose End (Un cabo suelto) directed by Uruguayan filmmaker Daniel Hendler; Eva y Adán en Miami directed by Cuban filmmaker Lilo Vilaplana; Homo Argentum from Argentinian directors Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat; It Would be Night in Caracas (Aun es de Noche en Caracas), by Venezuelan director Mariana Rondón and Peruvian-born director Marité Ugás; Runa Simi, a documentary set in Peru; Milly: Queen of Merengue, a musical about Dominican singer Milly Quezada directed by Dominican filmmaker Leticia Tonos Paniagua. The period piece Under the Same Sun (Bajo el mismo sol), directed by Spanish filmmaker Ulises Porra, takes place in 19^th century La Española, the colonial Caribbean island now shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

The Miami Film Festival hosted several documentaries about Cuba, including Revolution’s Daughter which focuses on one of Fidel Castro’s 11 children — Alina Fernández Revuelta – who fled Cuba in 1993 after rejecting her father’s repressive rule. Fernández Revuelta, who lives in Miami, attended the world premiere of the film. At a Q&A afterwards, she reflected on the Cuba her father created with his overthrow of the Batista regime in 1959.

“We’ve been a bizarre experiment,” Fernández Revuelta commented. “We’ve been undergoing 67 years of ‘building the revolution,’ which is absurd… because ‘revolution’ is a short moment in history. I think about what the French would have done if their revolution lasted 67 years. Nobody in France would have a head. So, we are a phenomenon. We are something indescribable. We are absurd.”

Among other Cuban-themed documentaries programmed at MFF were To the West, In Zapata, directed by David Bim, and the world premiere of Calle Cuba, directed by Vanessa Batista.

“We have an incredible programmer, Alejandro Ríos, who does the best job of anyone in the world on Cuban film,” Woolley affirms. “He does such a great job of connecting to the community, and [the screenings] sell well because the community trusts him and knows the films are going to be great. It’s a real badge of honor for the filmmakers to be here… They view it as their festival, and it’s a real celebration when they are accepted and premiere here. So, it’s a great program. We’re extremely proud of it, and it’s one that sales-wise just continues to grow. We’re really thrilled.”

Cohen, the director of programming, highlights others doc on the slate, including Ben McKenzie’s Everyone Is Lying to You for Money; Runa Simi directed by Augusto Zegarra; The Trial of Alec Baldwin, directed by Rory Kennedy, and Coroner to the Stars, a documentary about former L.A. County Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Thomas Noguchi directed by Ben Hethcoat and Keita Ideno.

“They’re some of the best movies in the lineup,” Cohen says. “I gravitate towards programming documentaries because I think that they’re kind of the vessel that has the most interesting conversations out of them afterwards.”

Any festival, no matter where in the world, faces the challenge of luring people from their homes to participate in the event.

“We, as the festival community, have something very special, which is that we have filmmaker guests, activations like parties, and things that make a festival an experience, and it competes really beautifully against that home watching cinema [on] Netflix or whatever service you may pick,” Woolley comments. “And people are hungry for that level of connection, and they’re excited to experience things together. For us, film festival attendance just continues to grow, and I think it’s because we offer a distinction, and people love that.”