The festival takes place from April 4 – 7, but kicks-off this evening with a screening of No, a film about General Pinochet’s almost 20-years Chilean dictatorship. The full film lineup for this year’s festival will be announced after the screening today. And when that happens, we’ll have it all for you right here!

In the meantime… a tease from the festival courtesy of CaribSeek News:

WILLEMSTAD (CIFFR) — On behalf of Fundashon Bon Intenshon, we are extremely proud to welcome you to the second edition of Curaçao IFFR.

We believe to have compiled such a versatile program that everyone will find something to one’s liking. From the premiere screening of the documentary Salsa Giants that was shot partly on Curaçao during last year’s jazz festival, human drama in conflict-ridden Kashmir in Valley of Saints to Amour, winner of the 2013 Oscar for Best Foreign Film, Curaçao IFFR aims to enrich and inspire you with its selection of 42 feature films and shorts from all over the world.

This year’s Opening Film comes from across the Atlantic from Spanish director Pablo Berger, who will also be present to introduce his critically acclaimed film Blancanieves, ‘a sparkling version of the wellknown fairytale of Snow White’. This silent movie, reminiscent of the earlier days of cinema, reminds us that in the present world filled with color, the ‘old-fashioned’ black & white is still just as powerful.

Besides the female bullfighter of Blancanieves, other young women all over the world are faced with exceptional challenges in their lives and learn how to overcome them: there’s a young girl learning to make choices while growing up in Germany in 1945 in Lore (Germany, Australia, United Kingdom), in Il futuro (Italy), a girl loses her parents and has to make her own way to the future, while in Wadjda, by director Haifaa Al Mansour, regarded as the first female filmmaker from Saudi Arabia, a 10-year old girl pursues her dream of owning her very own bicycle.

In line with the objectives of Fundashon Bon Intenshon, the Festival will host a special screening of the Spanish Yo, también, a strong social drama about a man with Down syndrome that moves but is also thought provoking, for Totolika, the parents’ association for parents of children with a mental disability.

Films produced and filmed close to home include Suriname’s Vrede – Herinneringen aan Anton de Kom from director Ida Does, short film E jardinero from Jo Henriquez (Aruba) and the documentary portrait on Curaçao artist and poet José Maria Capricorne by Tanja Fraai De wonderboom.

From the Caribbean and Latin American region, the Festival brings you some good old ‘Classics’ but this year the festival is also to celebrate the achievements of filmmakers from the region. To help kick off this annual award’s inaugural event, the Festival will present the first Yellow Robin Award for best recent film directed and produced by a filmmaker from the Caribbean region and Mexico. This grand prize will offer an up-and-coming filmmaker the premiere screening at the IFFR 2014 and a cash prize of $10,000.

However, in rewarding filmmakers from the region, let’s not forget our local talent. The Jury Award winning short films made by young local talented filmmakers who participated in the Short Movies, BIG Stories competition will be screened prior to each of the five Yellow Robin Award nominees. We can surely recommend you go see their work as well and don’t forget to vote for your favorite!

In addition to Pablo Berger, we would also like to extend a warm welcome to our international guests Pablo Croce (Salsa Giants), Sacha Gervasi (Hitchcock), Alvaro Pastor (Yo, también), and Marcelo Lordello (They’ll Come Back) who, among the filmmakers of the Yellow Robin Award, will partake in the festival to introduce their film and conduct Q&A’s for the public afterwards.

And in between watching all these wonderful movies you can visit the “Magic Lantern” exhibit at the Renaissance Hotel, that takes you on a journey through time, from before the era that movies existed and hand painted still images were projected with the help of candles and kerosene lamps through a magic lantern, via the slide projector to the present day multimedia projector. In addition to a small selection of Curaçao photographer Fred Fischer’s work from the 1950s, the impressive shortlist of entries for the locally held Black & White Digital Photography competition will be shown. And of course, every Festival needs some music, so you are very welcome to come and enjoy the free concert by the Dennis Aalse Youth Orchestra performing famous film scores at the Riffort plaza on Friday night.

Last but not least, we would like to express our sincere gratitude to the people of International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) and the Curaçao IFFR team who have helped put together this year’s Festival and we hope you will enjoy these days as much as we have in preparing this year’s program and ancillary activities.

Gregory E. Elias & Michael F. Elias

Fundashon Bon Intenshon

www.curacaoiffr.com