Caribbean Tales: Take 21!

Caribbean Tales has announced the twenty-one (21) filmmakers that will take part in the Tenth Annual CaribbeanTales Market Incubator (CTI) in partnership with The Caribbean Development Bank, Ontario Creates and Telefilm Canada, and with support from the National Film & Video Foundation of South Africa.  At the annual Big Pitch, they will compete for prizes that will include an award of $10,000 for Best Caribbean Project.

Celebrating its tenth anniversary this year, CTI is a development and production hub for international producers.  It aims to increase the volume of compelling world-class content from the Caribbean Region and from the world.  This year’s filmmakers come from Canada, Cuba, Trinidad, Jamaica, Belize, Haiti, and South Africa. Sixty percent of the selected filmmakers are female creators and all are producers of colour.

After receiving a record-breaking number of applications, projects were assessed by a team of industry professionals. From these, eleven (11) projects were selected, that range across romance, drama, thriller and speculative fiction.

Haitian film star and producer Jimmy Jean-Louis brings his feature psychological thriller steeped in Haitian folklore, Mother Water.  Jamaican cinematographer and director Gabrielle Blackwood’s Kendal is a coming-of-age period drama, set in 1950’s colonial Jamaica. From Trinidad and Tobago, Teneille Newallo and Stephen Hadeed’s Soucouyant is a supernatural Amerindian thriller, set in the time of Christopher Columbus. Canadian director Reem Morsi’s Fish  is a speculative fiction television series  that delves into the dark side of greed, betrayal and monsters; while Sylvia Vollenhoven’s feature drama Buckingham Palace tells the story of District Six, a Capetown slum in the 1960’s –and what happens when the bulldozers come. And from Cuba, Rosa Maria Rodriguez brings her horror feature Nara, that tells the tale of two sickly siblings confined at home, who succumb to their darker natures.