On the Saturday (14th of April) of the 8th edition of the Curacao International Film Festival Rotterdam the winners of this year’s Yellow Robin Award and Caribbean Shorts Competition were announced.

Picking a winner out of five incredible films from the Caribbean and Latin-America is definitely not an easy task. This year’s Yellow Robin Award nominees showed us astounding places and told stories that illuminate the present, coming from Cuba, Colombia, Mexico, Argentina and Panama. These past days not only the audience on Curacao were able to enjoy them, but this year’s jury consisting of Bero Beyer, Becca Voelcker and Eva den Heijer, had the honour to look deeper into these stories in order to pick the winner of the Yellow Robin Award 2019.

A special mention went out to Camila Rodriguez Tirana’s masterpiece from Colombia: En cenizas. In the words of the jury: “a film that delivers a forceful meditation on trauma and loss”, a story that left the movie theatre with them.

The Yellow Robin Award 2019 was happily awarded to Tierra Adentro. A documentary feature constructed by filmmaker Mauro Colombo about the Darién Gap, a dense and mysterious jungle that divides Panama and Colombia. “Although it deals with weighty political subjects like deforestation and migration, it is not didactic. It understands that one, inflammable shot speaks more than a talking head explanation. And it understands that a talking head, when she’s telling the story of her perilous migration –  from Africa to Latin America to the US – needs no additional explanation. 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.”

Mauro Colombo will take home a cash prize USD 2.500 and USD 7.500 worth of training/education in the context of talent development. In addition, the film is guaranteed screening in the Bright Future program section of International Film Festival Rotterdam in the Netherlands and at Morelia International Film Festival (FICM) in Mexico.

On behalf of the jury and Curacao International Film Festival Rotterdam the best of the Caribbean Shorts Competition was awarded to  Betzabé García for their film, The Girl With Two Heads. This year’s CSC jury, which consisted of Breanne Thomas, Marjan van der Haar and Pablo Baksht praised this film for having a “precise control of the image it presents both on screen to us as the audience and the way image is controlled by its main character. 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.”