Now entering its third year, Third Horizon Film Festival returns to Miami this fall, bringing cutting-edge film, visual art and music from the Caribbean and its diaspora to South Florida. The festival will take place from September 27th to 30th at O Cinema Wynwood.

For centuries, the Caribbean has been a place where people from the Americas, Africa, Europe and Asia have converged, and its stories are far richer and more nuanced than the tourism brochures would have you believe. As film production becomes less prohibitive and more democratic, a new generation of Caribbean filmmakers is seizing the moment to bring these stories to the screen. And with the current drive for diversity in film, it is now time to share these stories with the world. Third Horizon Film Festival aims to celebrate and empower the filmmakers leading this charge.

The festival was founded by Third Horizon, a Miami-based collective of Caribbean creatives whose first short film, "Papa Machete", had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2014 and its US premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2015, before going on to screen at more than 30 film festivals worldwide. The festival is staged in partnership with Caribbean Film Academy, a Brooklyn-based not-for-profit organization whose core mission is to support and distribute the work of Caribbean filmmakers.

Rules & Terms

Third Horizon Film Festival aims to celebrate and empower filmmakers from the Caribbean and its diaspora, and encourage filmmakers from outside the region to produce work there. This year, the festival will be accepting submissions of both feature films and short films. The requirements are as follows:

1. Short films must be shorter than 25 minutes; feature films must exceed 50 minutes.
2. All films must have been produced after January 1, 2017.
3. Priority is given to filmmakers from the Caribbean or of Caribbean heritage. However, we also welcome films about the Caribbean and its diaspora by non-Caribbean filmmakers.
4. Documentaries, narratives and animated films are all accepted.
5. Priority is given to Florida premieres.
5. Submission to Third Horizon Film Festival does not guarantee selection and screening.

For filmmakers in the Caribbean for whom exchange rates make the submission fees prohibitive — $20 for shorts; $40 for features — you may apply for a waiver via email to
info@thirdhorizonfilmfestival.com.

Film submissions must include:

a. Synopsis
b. Credits
c. 2 high resolution production stills or screen shots
d. Your film as a high resolution .mp4 or .mov file