Koubek Center

BITTER CANE
2025-05-31 17:30 (America/New_York) | Koubek Center, 2705 SW 3rd Street, Miami, FL, 33135, United States
By Ben Dupuy and Kim Ives | 77 mins | 1983 | Haiti
Filmed clandestinely under the Duvalier dictatorship, Bitter Cane, presented at THFF25 in a brand new restoration, is an incisive documentary interrogation of the exploitation and domination of the Haitian people. From peasant coffee farms in the rugged tropical mountains to steamy foreign-owned sweatshops in the capital, Port-au-Prince, the film takes the viewer on a journey through Haitian history to a deeper grasp of the country’s political economy today. The film explores the Haiti of the 1980s, a perspective that helps the viewer to better understand the crises that wrack the country now. Bitter Cane shows how foreign capitalists were beginning to drive peasants off the land and into the cities, creating giant shanty towns which have spawned crime, dislocation, and anarchy. Today, 40 years later, we are seeing the culmination of this socio-economic upheaval, which has left the country facing its third foreign military occupation in three decades.

EN PARÁBOLA/CONVERSATIONS ON TRAGEDY (PART I)
2025-05-31 15:30 | Koubek Center, 2705 SW 3rd Street, Miami, FL, 33135, United States
By: Natalia Lassalle-Morillo

Country: Puerto Rico
Language: English and Spanish w/English Subs
Duration: 63 mins
Year: 2024
Genre: Non-Fiction

SYNOPSIS

En Parábola/Conversations on Tragedy (Part I) is a reassemblage of the Greek myth of Antigone in collaboration with a cast of non-professional actors who reside in New York City’s Puerto Rican diasporic community. Developed through a multi-year process of collaborative theatrical rehearsal and experimental filmmaking, the work emerged through the cast’s revising, re-writing, and performing of the myth of Antigone inspired by their lived and inherited experiences of migration and belonging. Taking the form of a multi-channel film, En Parábola/Conversations on Tragedy (Part I) seeks to connect these communities after decades of geographical fragmentation, colonial erasure, dispossession, and cumulative environmental, economic, and political tragedies.
A Q+A with Natalia Lassalle-Morillo will follow the screening.

SCREENING THE STRUGGLE: CARIBBEAN ACTIVIST CINEMA REGAINED
2025-05-31 14:15 | Koubek Center, 2705 SW 3rd Street, Miami, FL, 33135, United States
This panel explores Caribbean heritage cinema as a tool for resistance, community action, and historical documentation. Centered on the films in the THFF25 retrospective You Don’t Get Freedom, You Take Freedom: Caribbean Activist Cinema 1978–1985, this discussion will examine the socio-political landscapes that shaped these films, the often collective filmmaking practices behind them, and seek to situate the films within the current moment.
Through the perspectives of filmmakers, activists, and researchers involved in the making and restoration of the films—namely, Women of Suriname (1978), Bitter Cane (1983), Sweet Sugar Rage (1985), and West Indies (1979)—we will investigate the material conditions of Caribbean working people, past and present, and the ways these films engaged with themes of (neo) colonialism, capitalism, immigration, and collective struggle. Additionally, panelists will explore the challenges of film restoration, the question of preserving politically radical works, and what it means to reclaim this history for contemporary movements.
This program is supported by: Dutch Culture USA at the Consulate General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and The Netherland-America Foundation

TRUE CHRONICLE OF THE BLIDA JOINVILLE PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL IN THE LAST CENTURY, WHEN DR FRANTZ FANON WAS HEAD OF THE FIFTH WARD BETWEEN 1953 AND 1956
2025-05-31 12:00 | Koubek Center, 2705 SW 3rd Street, Miami, FL, 33135, United States
By: Abdenour Zahzah

Country: Algeria, France
Language: Arabic, French w/English Subs
Duration: 90 mins
Year: 2024
Genre: Fiction

SYNOPSIS

1953, colonized Algeria. Frantz Fanon, a young black psychiatrist from Martinique, is appointed head doctor at the Blida-Joinville Hospital. As he puts his theories of “institutional psychotherapy” into practice in opposition to the racist theories of the Algiers School of Psychiatry, a war breaks out on his own wards.
A Q+A with Abdenour Zahzah will follow the screening.

SHORTS BLOCK: WHY DOES THE AIR TREMBLE?
2025-05-31 10:00 | Koubek Center, 2705 SW 3rd Street, Miami, FL, 33135, United States
PROGRAM DESCRIPTION

Filmmaking as process is at the heart of these five films, memorably imaginative attempts at working through a variety of themes, and towards new ways of understanding.
A Q&A with filmmakers whose work appears in this program will follow the screening.

NOBODY’S WORD
By Camara Taylor | 13 mins | 2025 | Barbados, Jamaica, UK
A family convenes exactly 500 years after Charles V grants permission to Lorenzo de Gorrevod “to import 4000 Africans into New Spain.” The King’s act marks the escalation of a rupture, with its origins in 1492, that remakes the world and reverberates into the present. This apparent “start of slavery” becomes an occasion to tell the story of one family’s implication across time and space. In nobody’s word, the family archive is digitised and disintegrated in order to reframe accounts, destabilise claims, and inhabit spaces between fact and fiction, questioning the narrative impulses that inform the stories we tell.
LOS CONJURADOS
By Humberto Gonzalez Bustillo | 9 mins | 2025 | Venezuela
A lone cyberflâneur stumbles upon a hidden corner of Google Maps, a forgotten place unfolding in the static. Shadows pace aimlessly, paths dissolve into nowhere, and figures flicker in and out of existence—fragments of untold stories. A shattered, distorted voice lingers, unrelenting, signaling borders and exile, both imagined and imposed. Still, the search goes on, endless.
LA SELVA OSCURA (DARK FOREST)
By Lucía Malandro and Daniel Saucedo | 15 mins | 2024 | Cuba, Spain
La selva oscura is a record of a long journey connecting two funeral rituals in Cuba: the state burial honoring those who fell in the Angola war and a spiritist ceremony welcoming spirits of the past back into the world of the living. These events, captured by Cuban amateur documentaries filmed in 1987, intertwine to form the core of this film, whose central reflections revolve around loss and oblivion.
NADA FUERA DE LA ISLA: PUENTES (NOTHING OUT OF THE ISLAND: BRIDGES)
By Dalissa Montes de Oca | 16 mins | 2024 | Dominican Republic
Fragmented memories and visions find a home in light and shadows, bridging the gap between the past, the present, and the loss of a mother.
PURO ANDAR
By Luciana Decker Orozco | 13 mins | 2025 | Bolivia
A journey to the underworld begins within our own entrails, shaped by the flesh we consume and the softened crumbs moistened by the saliva of mothers. This film explores the becoming of different times, from the intimate rhythm of digestion to the vast expanse of geological eras: stalagmites formed over millennia, fossilized dinosaur tracks, and the echoes of primordial movements, akin to growling. The film is inspired by the chapter “Puro Andar” from El Pez de Oro by Gamaliel Churata, which states that “we all carry the dead alive; that the dead live.”

KOUTÉ VWA (LISTEN TO THE VOICES)
2025-05-30 20:30 | Koubek Center, 2705 SW 3rd Street, Miami, FL, 33135, United States
By: Maxime Jean-Baptiste

Country: French Guiana, Belgium, France
Language: French Guianese Creole, French w/English Subs
Duration: 76 mins
Year: 2024
Genre: Hybrid

Melrick, a 13-year-old boy, spends his summer vacation with his grandmother Nicole in Cayenne, French Guiana. His presence and his desire to learn how to play the drum brings back the specter of Lucas, Nicole’s son, also a drummer, who died in tragic conditions 11 years earlier. Faced with the grief that haunts his family and Lucas’s best friend’s desire for revenge, Melrick seeks his own path to forgiveness.
A Q+A with Audrey Jean-Baptiste, co-writer of Kouté vwa, will follow the screening.

YOU DON’T GET FREEDOM, YOU TAKE FREEDOM: CARIBBEAN ACTIVIST CINEMA 1978–1985
2025-05-30 17:15 | Koubek Center, 2705 SW 3rd Street, Miami, FL, 33135, United States
PROGRAM DESCRIPTION

In keeping with its ongoing commitment to presenting heritage works of Caribbean cinema, both during its annual festival and as part of its year-round programming, Third Horizon is honored to present a retrospective of restored films at this year’s Festival. Entitled You Don’t Get Freedom, You Take Freedom: Caribbean Activist Cinema 1978–1985, the retrospective comprises four films, all recently restored works, themed around labor and workers’ rights.
Three of the films are documentaries, collaboratively made works of non-fiction, originally shot on 16mm and being presented at THFF25 in beautiful digital restorations. While they were made independently of each other, the films all share a concern for the rights of laboring people, within the context of often exploitative, neocolonial hegemonic power structures. They also reflect the often creative ways in which working people organize to agitate for their rights and for better employment and working conditions.
The final film that rounds out the retrospective is the recent restoration of West Indies: The Fugitive Slaves of Liberty (1979), directed by the late Mauritanian French filmmaker Med Hondo.
This screening is supported by: Dutch Culture USA at the Consulate General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, The Netherland-America Foundation & The Miami Workers Center

SWEET SUGAR RAGE
By Honor Ford-Smith, Harclyde Walcott | 56 mins | 1985 | Jamaica
MAY 30, 5:15PM – Purchase Ticket
In the documentary Sweet Sugar Rage, being presented at THFF25 in a new, extended restoration, Sistren Collective, a popular Jamaican women’s troupe, uses improvisation and theater as consciousness-raising tools for both rural and urban audiences. Their performances speak directly to the daily experiences of women—the least empowered workers, who labor long hours for low wages with no benefits or rights to organize for better conditions. Using role-play and interviews with female cane workers, the collective develops dramatizations which analyze social issues and pinpoint their concerns.
OEMA FOE SRANAN (WOMEN OF SURINAME)
By At van Praag, Nadia Tilon & Luna Hupperetz | 56 mins | 1978 | Suriname, The Netherlands
MAY 30, 5:15PM – Purchase Ticket
Oema Foe Sranan (Women of Suriname) portrays the lives of four women, who relate the history of Dutch (neo)colonialism in Suriname and racism and being disenfranchised in the Netherlands using personal stories. The film was produced by Cineclub Vrijheidsfilms in cooperation with LOSON (the Dutch national organisation for Surinamese people), in the framework of political struggle, as a sign of solidarity between Surinamese and Dutch people, who transfer a collective message about the socio-political situation in Suriname and the Surinamese community in the 1970s. The film centers on the hope for a better future, and liberation from foreign influence.

SHORTS BLOCK: A FEVER DREAM WAITING FOR THE RIGHT BUILDERS
2025-05-30 15:30 | FL
PROGRAM DESCRIPTION

Urban space is at the centre of these four films, formally attentive explorations of various intersections of gentrification, migration, and empire, from Chicago to Miami, Bangalore to London.

FOR THOSE THAT LIVED THERE
By Shawn Antoine II | 6 mins | 2023 | USA
Amidst the ivy-draped remnants of once-notorious public housing projects, For Those That Lived Thereweaves a visual tapestry, navigating the poignant impacts of gentrification, the displacement of Black legacies, and emerging migrant narratives. Against Chicago’s ever-evolving skyline, this evocative exploration immerses audiences into the soul of a neighborhood transformed.
NO SE VE DESDE ACÁ (YOU CAN’T SEE IT FROM HERE)
By Enrique Pedráza-Botero | 20 mins | 2024 | Colombia, USA
Much like the people it is about, No se ve desde acá is suspended in that stasis between arriving and finding belonging, moving associatively through observational vignettes in contemporary Miami, juxtaposed with a disruptive collection of video and sound archives that range as far back as the 1930’s, revealing an obsession with American individualism and collective uncertainty as questions arise for immigrants about cultural identity and economic opportunity.
RADICLE CITY
By Arjuna Keshvani-Ham | 12 mins | 2024 | India, UK
Radicle City is a cinematic essay which imagines a future in which Bangalore’s gardens no longer exist. Narrated as a poetic address by a voice who has grown up in a city without trees, the film’s hybrid documentary and fictional narrative recovers and reinterprets footage of an unknown walker’s journey along a park that marks an old line of colonial segregation in the city. This is an old border with new lines: today the city is India’s “silicon valley”, an IT hub at the heart of a network of global capitalism, an incubator for the apparatuses of Modi’s digital technocracy and one of India’s most unequal and divided cities. Moving restlessly back and forth between past and possible future, the film is at once an investigation into the city’s complex colonial entanglements and their afterlives, and an elegy to the city’s gardens, fragile spaces of resistance in a metropolis which threatens their destruction.
OKAY KESKIDEE! LET ME SEE INSIDE
By Rhea Storr | 20 mins | 2025 | UK
Okay Keskidee! Let Me See Inside is a personal account of Black community spaces in the UK, focusing on the Caribbean diaspora. By visiting the site of the former Keskidee Center that is now luxury apartments, the film considers the conditions which allowed this historical space to thrive. The film explores the reasons why gathering in physical space is difficult because of the premium cost of space and the often free labor or government funding needed, both of which are scarce. We see the architecture of surrounding developments driven by rampant capitalism. Can the digital realm replace a physical community presence and produce an accessible archive for a new generation?

STAGING CINEMA: PERFORMANCE, THEATER, AND CONTEMPORARY CARIBBEAN FILM
2025-05-30 14:15 | FL
In contemporary Caribbean documentary/hybrid/expanded cinema, incorporating performance is more than an aesthetic choice—it is a tool for reckoning with history, collective memory, and political struggle. Whether through theatrical staging, direct address to the camera, or the incorporation of live performance, artists and filmmakers use performance as a means of processing trauma, reclaiming agency, and reshaping dominant narratives.
This panel brings together THFF25 filmmakers Joseph Hillel (Koutkekout), Natalia Lasalle-Morillo (En Parábola/Conversations on Tragedy (Part I)), and Génesis Valenzuela (the live performance A Freedom Struggle: Looking for Lucrecia Perez) to discuss how theater and performance function in their work. How does performance offer a way to navigate political upheaval, displacement, violence, and historical trauma? What is the relationship between performance as catharsis and as resistance? How does collective creation in theater translate to film? And how do artists balance the tension between theatricality and the real in storytelling?

L’OUBLI TUE DEUX FOIS (TWICE INTO OBLIVION)
2025-05-30 12:00 | Koubek Center, 2705 SW 3rd Street, Miami, FL, 33135, United States
By: Pierre Michel Jean

Country: Haiti
Language: Kreyòl and Spanish, w/English Subs
Duration: 100 mins
Year: 2024
Genre: Non-Fiction

SYNOPSIS

Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the island of Quisqueya, as well as a hidden genocide. In 1937, Dominican dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo ordered the massacre of over 20,000 Haitian immigrants living in the Dominican Republic. Daphné Ménard, a Haitian theatre director, brings together actors from both parts of the island to work on an unprecedented event, a creative project that demands people from both sides to summon up the darker realms of their histories.
A Q+A with Pierre Michel Jean will follow the screening.

SHORTS BLOCK: JUST A DREAM, LIKE ALL OTHERS
2025-05-30 10:00 | Koubek Center, 2705 SW 3rd Street, Miami, FL, 33135, United States
PROGRAM DESCRIPTION

Blood ties are centered in these four films, fictional explorations of the often fraught relationships between kith and kin—and one non-fiction twist on the old pledge, til death do us part.
A Q&A with filmmakers whose work appears in this program will follow the screening.

AFTER SUNDAY
By Omolola Ajao | 16 mins | 2024 | Canada
As a young woman takes a hard look into her family’s past, difficult truths begin to surface in the memories of their migrant journey. Within the fragments of differing perspectives, she must sort through past recollections to get to a place of her own fictioning.
THE TOBACCONIST
By Keifer Nyron Taylor | 22 mins | 2024 | United Kingdom
Tobias, an unemployed British-Jamaican personal trainer, sells counterfeit tobacco for his mother who is moving back to Jamaica after deportation threats. One violent encounter with a war veteran, Rough Sleeper, a spectral reminder of his father who also fought as a British subject, turns his quick cash scheme into a haunting odyssey across South London.
SERVICIO NECROLÓGICO PARA USTED (OBITUARY SERVICE FOR YOU)
By María Salafranca | 12 mins | 2024 | Cuba
On the side of the road, in a rural Cuban town, stands a funeral home in which Maurilio and Fidela, partners in work as in life, have been preparing corpses for the past seventeen years. With quietly affectionate humour, Servicio necrológico para usted takes us on an offbeat tour of this discreet establishment where death and love intertwine on a daily basis.
ST. ANDREWS
By Erin Ramirez | 16 mins | 2024 | Jamaica
Coming to terms with her family’s racial prejudice, a Chinese-Jamaican teenager is pushed to carry out a subtle act of defiance—one which may have permanent consequences.

Third Horizon Film Festival 2025
2025-05-29 - 2025-06-01 | Koubek Center, 2705 SW 3rd Street, Miami, FL, 33135, United States
Almost every year since 2016, THFF has gathered filmmakers, film lovers, and members of our community to experience the art of Caribbean and diaspora cinema through a rigorously curated program of films, visual art, performances, panels, and other related events.
As we continue to find ourselves in an era where a hegemonic establishment seeks to shore itself up to the misrepresentation and exploitation of minority communities in Florida and worldwide, never has it been more necessary to foreground independent filmmaking voices that are unafraid to do what cinema, at its resisting best, does so well: speak truth to power.
And so in curating this year’s THFF, we are making a determined effort, as we always do, to ensure our program reflects the idea of cinema as a socially and politically disruptive tool, both in terms of form and content.

We invite you to join us for an unforgettable weekend of engagement with films by the Caribbean and its diaspora’s most cutting-edge moving-image artists.

Segundo Encuentro de Creadores de Cine y Televisión, “De la Idea a la Pantalla 2”
2025-05-22 11:00 - 21:00, 2025-05-19 - 2025-05-23 | FL
El Consulado General de México en Miami, a través de su Instituto Cultural, en colaboración con los Consulados Generales de España y Argentina, así como con el Miami Dade College – Koubek Center, presentan el Segundo Encuentro de Creadores de Cine y Televisión, “De la Idea a la Pantalla 2”. Este evento tiene como objetivo crear una plataforma de diálogo, formación, promoción y vinculación entre creadores audiovisuales en Estados Unidos, México y América Latina.
Miércoles 21 mayo
10:30AM – 12:30PM– Proyección Película “Los Futbolísimos”. Película matinal dirigida a estudiantes de las escuelas de Miami Dade County. Presenta Agregaduría Educación de España.
5:00PM – 6:00PM – Panel con Directores Locales: Retos y Procesos. Modera: PAFF Anuncio de Beca Cinenauta Cristian Proa
6:00PM – 7:00PM – Panel de Coproducción Internacional:
Leo Zimbron (México)
Mónica Aguirre, Secuoya/ Black Sheep Productions (España)
Carla Gómez, Former VIX/Netflix
Jimena Argüelles, Non Stop Studios (México)
Gerardi Brandi, (Argentina)
Modera: Lilliana Moyano
7:30PM – 8:30PM – Panel Talento en Producción:
David Chocarro (Argentina)
Sofía Aragón (México)
Moderadora: Jimena Argüelles
Jueves 22 mayo
11:15AM – 12:00M – Lunch
12:00M – 1:00PM – Panel de Festivales de Cine:
Fernando Arciniega, IFFM
Alberto Sigarroa, MFF
Cristian Ossa, We Cam Fest
1:00PM – 2:30PM – Proyección Película Argentina-Uruguay “La Uruguaya” Film
3:00PM – 4:45PM – Proyección Película España “El Día de la Bestia”
5:00PM – 6:30PM – Proyección de Cortos
6:30PM – 8:00PM – Proyección Película México “Casi el Paraíso”
8:00PM – 8:30PM – Q&A Productores: Juan Curi y Juan Ponce
8:30PM – 9:00PM – Networking (Eventbrite)

Clase Magistral con el galardonado bailaor y coreógrafo Marcos Flores
2025-05-03 19:00 | Koubek Center, 2705 SW 3rd Street, Miami, FL, 33135, United States
Con motivo de las presentaciones del aclamado bailaor Marcos Flores los días 2 y 3 de mayo junto a FUNDarte en el Aventura Arts and Cultural Center, el Koubek Center y el Flamenco Dance Institute de Irene Lozano se complacen en presentar una Master Class exclusiva el día 3 de mayo a las 12:00 PM en el Art Space del Koubek Center.
Una oportunidad única para aprender de uno de los referentes más innovadores del flamenco contemporáneo.
Para registrarse, deben comunicarse al 786-658-7642.
Marcos Flores es bailaor y coreógrafo flamenco, galardonado con el Premio Nacional de Flamenco y el Premio Max, entre otros reconocimientos. Recientemente ha sido distinguido con el Premio Godot 2024 al Mejor Bailarín y el Premio de la Crítica Especializada 2025 del Festival de Jerez.
Entre sus obras más recientes se encuentran Rayuela (2020), Sota, Caballo y Reina (2021), Vengo Jondo (2022) y Tierra Virgen (2024). Además, ha sido coreógrafo invitado del Ballet Nacional de España. Su obra continúa enriqueciendo el flamenco con una voz artística única, marcada por la curiosidad, la exploración y una creatividad sin miedo.

Día Internacional del Libro
2025-05-01 19:00 | FL
La Feria del Libro de Miami y Koubek Center del Miami Dade College te invitan a celebrar el Día Internacional del Libro con una velada literaria única.
La Feria del Libro de Miami y el Koubek Center se complacen en invitar a la comunidad a la segunda edición de la celebración anual del Día Internacional del Libro, un evento que reúne a algunas de las instituciones culturales más representativas de la ciudad para celebrar la literatura en la primavera.
Este encuentro especial será una excelente oportunidad para que el público tenga un contacto cercano con autores y gestores culturales de Miami, mientras conmemoramos una fecha clave para la comunidad hispanohablante. Representantes de cada entidad compartirán breves lecturas de sus obras, en una noche dedicada a la palabra, la creación literaria y el intercambio cultural. Además, habrá venta de libros y un brindis para celebrar la riqueza de nuestra vida literaria.
Participan:
Ediciones Suburbano · Cinco Books · Imago por las Artes · Revista Literaria Baquina · Fundación Cuatrogatos · CAAW Ediciones (Cuban Artists Around the World) · Nagari Foundation, Inc. · Insularis Magazine y La Otra Esquina de las Palabras · Centro Cultural Español de Cooperación Iberoamericana · Editorial El Ateje · Unos Otros Ediciones
Lecturas a cargo de:
Kelly Martínez Grandal · Silvia Royo · Claudia Noguera · Maricel Mayor Marsán · Ana Schein · Denis Fortún Bouzo · Jhanayra Manzano · José Prats Sariol · María Marco Villate · Elvira de las Casas · Daniel Deprophet
Con el apoyo de Mariano Moreno Culinary Institute
Jueves 1 de mayo de 2025 – 7:00 PM
Koubek Center Teatro | 2705 SW 3rd St., Miami, FL 33135
Entrada libre + Valet parking gratuito
Brindis, venta de libros y más !

Mariela in the Desert
2025-04-24 19:30 - 2025-04-27 19:00 | Koubek Center, 2705 SW 3rd Street, Miami, FL, 33135, United States
The Koubek Center at Miami Dade College
2705 SW 3rd St, Miami, FL 33135, USA
Mariela and José were once the golden couple of the Mexican artists’ inner circle. Together they built a family and an artist colony to host friends Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, and Rufino Tamayo. But now their daughter has grown up and run away, their friends are too famous to call, and artistic inspiration has been strangled by isolation and lies. Set in the northern Mexican desert in 1950, Mariela in the Desert is a deadly mystery—a layered yet profoundly honest story of what happens to a family when creativity is forced to dry and wither away.
Content Advisory
This production contains mature themes and language. Ages 12 and up.

Two Islands Miami Film Festival
2025-04-13 14:45 | Koubek Center Theater, 2705 SW 3rd Street, Miami, FL, 33135, United States
Directed by | Humberto Ochoa | 2024 52 Minutes | Spanish, English
Logline | Five artists from two different cultures, Afro-Cuban and First Nations Aboriginal Australians, collaborate through
music and dance to explore their ancestor’s cultural heritage.
The Koubek Center is excited to be partnering with the Miami Film Festival, returning April 3 – 13 all across #Miami.
Catch groundbreaking films, red carpet moments, and unforgettable events across Miami for a film-worthy 10 days.
Tag us!
@MiamiFIlm #MFF42 #MiamiFF

Two Islands Premiere
2025-04-13 14:45 | Koubek Center Theater, 2705 SW 3rd Street, Miami, FL, 33135, United States
Two Islands is an evocative documentary that uses the art of cinematic storytelling to explore an extraordinary international cultural exchange between Afro-Cuban artists from Miami and First Nations Aboriginal artists from Australia. This collaboration delves into the rich traditions, rituals, and ceremonies of these two vibrant cultures. Through the exchange of ideas, values, and traditions, Two Islands highlights the power of cultural connection in fostering tolerance, acceptance, and the continuous growth of our diverse global community.
The journey began with a two-week artistic residency in Miami between the Afro-Cuban and Aboriginal artists that culminated in a multidisciplinary musical and dance performance at the Koubek Center in December 2023, featuring Afro-Cuban multi-instrumentalist and educator Michael Gil, who worked alongside with Gary Lang, Artistic Director and Choreographer of the Aboriginal-run NT Dance Company; Banula Marika, Yolngu elder from East Arnhem Land and David Spry, Marranunggu Marrathiyel singer-songwriter from Darwin, Australia, along with Afro-Cuban dancer and choreographer Marisol Blanco from Sikan Afro-Cuban Dance Project and musicians Manuel Clua, René Pedroso, and Caridad Paisán, and dancers Suramy Suarez Braulio Hernandez.
The culmination of this two-year international cultural exchange is now brought to life in Two Islands, a documentary produced by Melissa Messulam, Director of MDC’s Koubek Center, and directed by Humberto Ochoa, a renowned storyteller and photographer known for his work in documentary and portrait photography.
This inspiring film was produced by Miami Dade College’s Koubek Center and was made possible thanks to the support of Miami Dade College, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs.

Corina
2025-04-13 12:00, 2025-04-12 13:00 | Koubek Center Theater, 2705 SW 3rd Street, Miami, FL, 33135, United States
Directed by | Urzula Barba Hopfner | 98 Minutes | Spanish
Logline | A 20-year-old housebound woman accidentally compromises her publishing company’s famous book saga. To save her job she must overcome her fears.
The Koubek Center is excited to be partnering with the Miami Film Festival, returning April 3 – 13 all across #Miami.
Catch groundbreaking films, red carpet moments, and unforgettable events across Miami for a film-worthy 10 days.
Tag us!
@MiamiFIlm #MFF42 #MiamiFF

Cherri
2025-04-12 17:30 | Koubek Center Theater, 2705 SW 3rd Street, Miami, FL, 33135, United States
Directed by | Fabián Suárez | 2025 | 82 Minutes | Spanish
Logline | Cherri is an obese gay man who cares for his elderly husband. When he develops a crush on a handsome security guard he gets taken advantage of.
The Koubek Center is excited to be partnering with the Miami Film Festival, returning April 3 – 13 all across #Miami.
Catch groundbreaking films, red carpet moments, and unforgettable events across Miami for a film-worthy 10 days.
Tag us!
@MiamiFIlm #MFF42 #MiamiFF

The Python Hunt
2025-04-12 14:30, 2025-04-09 21:00 | Koubek Center Theater, 2705 SW 3rd Street, Miami, FL, 33135, United States
Directed by | Xander Robin | 2025 | 91 Minutes | English
Logline | Every year, the Florida government invites the general public to compete in an invasive python removal contest in
the Everglades.
The Koubek Center is excited to be partnering with the Miami Film Festival, returning April 3 – 13 all across #Miami.
Catch groundbreaking films, red carpet moments, and unforgettable events across Miami for a film-worthy 10 days.
Tag us!
@MiamiFIlm #MFF42 #MiamiFF

The Goldsmith’s Secret (El secreto del orfebre)
2025-04-11 21:00, 2025-04-10 18:45 | Koubek Center Theater, 2705 SW 3rd Street, Miami, FL, 33135, United States
Directed by| Olga Osorio | 2025 | 99 Minutes | Spanish
Logline | Goya winner Mario Casas (The Invisible Guest) and Goya nominee Michelle Jenner (Berlín) star in the adaptation of
Elia Barceló’s romance novel.
The Koubek Center is excited to be partnering with the Miami Film Festival, returning April 3 – 13 all across #Miami.
Catch groundbreaking films, red carpet moments, and unforgettable events across Miami for a film-worthy 10 days.
Tag us!
@MiamiFIlm #MFF42 #MiamiFF

Isla Familia
2025-04-11 18:30 | Koubek Center Theater, 2705 SW 3rd Street, Miami, FL, 33135, United States
Directed by | Abraham Jimenez | 2024 | 85 Minutes | Spanish
Logline | Documents independent journalist Abraham Jiménez Enoa during the last years of his life, from the Covid
pandemic in Cuba through his political exile.
The Koubek Center is excited to be partnering with the Miami Film Festival, returning April 3 – 13 all across #Miami.
Catch groundbreaking films, red carpet moments, and unforgettable events across Miami for a film-worthy 10 days.
Tag us!
@MiamiFIlm #MFF42 #MiamiFF

Cuba's Eternal Night (La noche eterna de Cuba)
2025-04-10 18:30 | Koubek Center Theater, 2705 SW 3rd Street, Miami, FL, 33135, United States
Directed by | Jordan Allott | 205 | 66 Minutes | Spanish
Logloine | 5 Cubans are filmed in struggle from government repression, scarcity of food and medicine, and the biggest mass
exodus the island ever experienced.
The Koubek Center is excited to be partnering with the Miami Film Festival, returning April 3 – 13 all across #Miami.
Catch groundbreaking films, red carpet moments, and unforgettable events across Miami for a film-worthy 10 days.
Tag us!
@MiamiFIlm #MFF42 #MiamiFF

Espina
2025-04-10 09:00 | Koubek Center Theater, 2705 SW 3rd Street, Miami, FL, 33135, United States
Directed by | Daniel Poler | 129 Minutes | Spanish
Logline | Jonathan, a person who used a wheelchair, recruits two unlikely aides for a wild trip to Panama City to settle a long-held grudge.
The Koubek Center is excited to be partnering with the Miami Film Festival, returning April 3 – 13 all across #Miami.
Catch groundbreaking films, red carpet moments, and unforgettable events across Miami for a film-worthy 10 days.
Tag us!
@MiamiFIlm #MFF42 #MiamiFF

Becoming Vera
2025-04-09 18:30 | Koubek Center Theater, 2705 SW 3rd Street, Miami, FL, 33135, United States
Directed by | Sergio Vizuete | 2025 | 87 Minutes | English
Logline | A young pianist battles poverty, unscrupulous music producers and her own insecurities to find a future in the world of Latin Jazz.
The Koubek Center is excited to be partnering with the Miami Film Festival, returning April 3 – 13 all across #Miami.
Catch groundbreaking films, red carpet moments, and unforgettable events across Miami for a film-worthy 10 days.
Tag us!
@MiamiFIlm #MFF42 #MiamiFF
