Private Project

MIA-mi

Meet Marvin, Laura, Tony, and Juan as they decide if their hometown holds a place in their uncertain futures. Will they stay on course in a city where drugs, sex, violence, and glamour are just one side of its complex nature?

What's Your Miami?

  • Yesenia Lima
    Director
  • Laura Di Lorenzo
    Key Cast
  • Greysun Morales
    Key Cast
  • Antonio Gonzalez
    Key Cast
  • Riccy Carabeo
    Key Cast
  • Benjamin Michel
    Director of Photography
  • Tricia Conelly
    Assistant Directors
  • Brian Gutierrez
    Assistant Directors
  • Enrique Fernandez-Bravo
    Crew
  • Stephane Renard
    Crew
  • Gabriel Ortega
    Crew
  • Jonathan Ortega
    Crew
  • Tristan John
    Crew
  • Natalie Machado
    Crew
  • Miranda Campbell
    Crew
  • Jennifer Huynh
    Crew
  • Project Type:
    Feature
  • Runtime:
    1 hour 46 minutes 50 seconds
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Yesenia Lima

Yesenia Lima is a Cuban-American Writer/Director from Miami, FL. She holds a MFA in Entrepreneurial Digital Cinema from UCF, where she has produced and directed her debut feature film MIA-mi. She currently teaches film studies and directing with the Los Angeles Film School. More: www.yesenialima.com // www.MIA-mi.com

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Director Statement

Film is a communal medium. It takes more than one person to create a film and its potential is fully realized when it can be experienced with and through others. In this regard I aim to make work that continuously inspires its audience as well as those contributing their skills and talents to its creation. My focus is on communicating the nuances of every day life that connect us all as human beings from my point of view while inviting others to reflect upon and share their own.

To me, that is currently a particular city, the people I’ve met there, and the way in which that city is projected into the mindset of the rest of the country and the rest of the world as well. Miami, FL, is the city where I was born and raised and ultimately the place that most strongly influenced my sense of self. It was not until I moved away that I fully realized the one sided identity that so many came to know of this place. I am greatly interested in the way that other Miami natives tie their identities to that of their hometown as well as people in and from cities globally. Do we create identities for these places and thus ourselves based on what we see of them in mainstream media, or is mainstream media simply reflecting what we make these places to be? These are the questions I've explored through the making of my latest film, MIA-mi.