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The winners of the 5^th Yellow Robin Award and the 1^st Caribbean Shorts Award were just announced!

Yellow Robin Award

The feature film debut of Alejandro Andújar, El hombre que cuida (The Watchman), won the Yellow Robin Award for upcoming filmmakers from the Caribbean and Latin America.
ANDÚJAR (1980, Dominican Republic) initially studied social communication and journalism, moved to Cuba and graduated in 2004 from the Film School of San Antonio de los Banos. In 2014 he became the founder and artistic director of RDOC, the Caribbean’s first documentary film festival. In 2008, he released a short documentary A Day at the Market. El hombre que cuida is his feature film debut.

The Yellow Robin Award consists of a cash prize, participation in a talent development program, and screening of the film in the Bright Future program of International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2018 as well as screening at the next edition of Morelia International Film Festival in Mexico.
This edition, the jury consisted of Bero Beyer, festival director IFFR, Curaçao filmmaker/producer Felix de Rooy, and Wendy Mitchell of British Film Council.

Caribbean Shorts Award

In the first edition of the Caribbean Shorts Competition, the Award went to Armand Simon from Aruba for his short film E yobida di ayera (Yesterday’s Rain), about a girl gathering the courage to express her love for her best friend. According to the jury: “Yesterday’s Rain is able to move us on an existential level, it stands out in its attempt to remain humanistic, humble, and honest while at the same time depicting very courageously the first signs of a painful fate.”

After studying at the Rotterdam Conservatory and the Utrecht University for the Arts, Arman Simon returned to Aruba to devote himself to the education and guidance of young promising talents on the island and founded the Da Vinci Academy, which includes a unique screen acting program for teens, the Young Actors Club. In 2012, he released his first short film The Package. E yobida di ayera is his second short film.

The Award entails that the winning film will screen at all film festival partners of the cooperation agreement signed in 2016, namely Cuba, Dominican Republic, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Mexico, and Trinidad & Tobago. The jury consisted of Mirjam Klootwijk, IFFR program manager, filmmaker Nathalie Alonso Casale, and Alex Santiago Perez (Yellow Robin Award winner 2015 with Las vacas con gafas).