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Still: winner Yellow Robin Award

On Saturday 13 April 2019, Tierra adentro by Mauro Colombo won the Yellow Robin Award at the 8th edition of Curaçao International Film Festival Rotterdam CIFFR. The Caribbean Shorts Award went to The Girl with Two Heads by Betzabé García.

IFFR's sister festival in Curaçao gives the filmmaking talent of the Caribbean region an international platform. The Yellow Robin Award Competition and the Caribbean Shorts Competition have proved to be a springboard for filmmaking careers, with both winners automatically selected to screen at the next edition of IFFR. This year's winning titles will feature in IFFR 2020's Bright Future section.

Yellow Robin Award 

Filmmaker Maura Colombo won the seventh Yellow Robin Award for the
Tierra adentro, his film about the Darién Gap, a dense and mysterious jungle that divides Panama and Colombia. Mauro Colombo received a cash prize of $2,500 as well as $7,500 worth of training in the context of talent development in programmes such as BoostNL (IFFR Pro and Nederlands Film Festival) or CineMart (IFFR Pro).

Still: Tierra adentro

This year’s jury consisted of artist Eva den Heijer, IFFR 2019’s Young Film Critic Becca Voeckler, and IFFR’s festival director Bero Beyer. Their words on the winning film: “Although it deals with weighty political subjects like deforestation and migration, it’s not didactic. It understands that one inflammable shot speaks more than a talking head explanation. It knows there is no need for additional explanation when she’s telling the story of her perilous migration, from Africa to Latin America to the US. This is a film that understands that plural voices are what define a place, and the many perspectives they offer are what makes cinema so necessary.”

A special mention also went out to Camila Rodriguez Tirana for En cenizas. The jury described it as: “a feature that delivers a forceful meditation on trauma and loss”, and a story that left the film theatre with them.

Click here for an overview of the Yellow Robin Award Competition full selection .

Caribbean Shorts Award

The Girl with Two Heads by Betzabé García won the third Caribbean Shorts Competition. The short film jury, which consisted of filmmaker Breanne Thomas, film producer Pablo Baksht, and IFFR’s managing director Marjan van der Haar, praised this film for having a “precise control of the image. It refuses to waver from its strong point of view and offers a peek into the way two very different worlds choose to interpret that image for better or for worse.”

This competition is the result of a region-wide collaboration between seven film festivals – Cuba, Dominican Republic, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Mexico, Trinidad and Tobago, and Curaçao. Each festival submitted a short film to enter the Caribbean Shorts Competition. The winning film will screen at all these festivals, as well as the next edition of IFFR (22 Jan - 2 Feb, 2020).