6th edition Curaçao International Film Festival Rotterdam 

5 – 9 April 2017 

PRESS RELEASE

Rotterdam, 31 March 2017 

From 5 through 9 April, Curaçao International Film Festival Rotterdam (CIFFR) will unspool for the sixth time in Willemstad. CIFFR presents an interesting mix of local and regional talent and highlights from IFFR 2017. Added to the mix are some fresh new titles that have kicked up a storm at other film festivals, such as Silver Bear winner The Other Side of Hope by Aki Kaurismäki, which opens the festival on 5 April.

The Other Side of Hope

With recent independent fiction films, documentaries and short films from all over the world, CIFFR has been expanding Curaçao’s film horizons since 2012. The festival – an initiative by Fundashon Bon Intenshon organised in cooperation with International Film Festival Rotterdam – seeks to inspire film-lovers and help young film talent from the region to get ahead. The Curaçao edition of IFFR is a welcome expansion of the festival’s international film screening and support activities.

Festival director Bero Beyer: “We are particularly pleased that this festival is being realised for the sixth time: it is a feast of cinema and reflection. CIFFR is a wonderful opportunity to see the world from a different perspective thanks to the many beautiful visions cinema serves up to us. The combination of films that are setting the tone internationally with local filmmakers gives the festival extra sparkle and depth. We are thrilled that, in its sixth year, CIFFR enjoys such broad support, and is therefore able to make a wide audience enthusiastic about daring films.”

For the fifth time in succession, CIFFR will present the Yellow Robin Award Competition in which feature films by talented, up-and-coming filmmakers from the Caribbean and Latin America compete for the Yellow Robin Award. The nominees are Angélica by Marisol Gómez Mouakad (Puerto Rico); Bad Lucky Goat by Samir Oliveros (Colombia); El hombre que cuida by Alejandro Andújar (Dominican Republic); Keyla by Viviana Gómez Echeverry (Colombia) and Melocotones by Héctor M. Valdez (Dominican Republic). An international jury will determine who will walk away with the Yellow Robin Award 2017. The winning film gets a spot in the Bright Future programme at IFFR 2018, as well as at the Morelia International Film Festival in Mexico. In addition, the Award comes with a 10,000-dollar prize for the filmmaker.

Keyla (left), Bad Lucky Goat (right)

A new feature of this sixth edition is the Caribbean Shorts Competition – the result of a cooperation initiated by the festival in 2016 with six film festivals from the region: in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Mexico and Trinidad & Tobago. These festivals exchange international professionals and organise workshops and competitions in order to share knowledge and experience. Each of these six festivals submitted a film for the inaugural edition of the Caribbean Shorts Competition. The winning short film will screen at all of the festivals. 

But CIFFR offers much more alongside its competitions: such as the themed programme Poetry in Motion; a series of music documentaries under the Music Callsbanner; an extensive educational programme; special film screenings in community centres and some twenty highlights of IFFR 2017, including Barry Jenkins’ audience smash hit Moonlight, as well as films such as Jackie by Pablo Larraín and Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson.

Moonlight (left), Jacky (right)