Film still from ‘Project of the Century,’ one of 11 Knight Competition entries. Photo courtesy Miami International Film Festival.

The 32nd Miami International Film Festival, which begins Friday, not only boasts an impressive schedule that includes an Academy Award nominee (Argentina’s “Wild Tales,”), programs on Asian and French film, documentaries and emerging Cuban filmmakers, but also five awards, all with cash prizes.

Two are supported by Knight Foundation: the Knight Competition and the Knight Documentary Achievement Award. The first focuses on dramatic works and awards $40,000 in prizes for the Best Film, Best Director and Best Performance, chosen by a panel of jurors. Audience members get to select the documentary prize, which is open to all documentaries in the festival and  awards $10,000.

The festival also includes the Lexus Opera Prima Ibero-American Competition, given to first-time feature filmmakers from Latin America, Spain and Portugal; the Park Grove Shorts Competition; and the Jordan Alexander Ressler Screenwriting Award. All of these competitions are juried and award cash prizes. Films are also eligible to compete for Best Feature and Best Short Audience Awards.

“The awards are really important. It’s part of our signature. It’s a major part of our identity,” says Jaie Laplante, executive director of the festival. “It’s like the Academy Awards for us, in a sense. So we save the very, very best quality films for that. It’s the signature section of the festival.”

The Knight Competition features 11 entries, including international entries with larger themes, such as “The Project of the Century,” from Cuban filmmaker Carlos Machado Quintela, and the Argentine-Panamanian production “Invasion,” directed by Panamanian filmmaker Abner Benaim; but also a Miami tale about a local character in “The Strongest Man,” by director Kenny Riches.

The Knight Competition “has a jury of very esteemed professionals,” says Laplante. “Including Amma Asante, who did ‘A Way of Life’ and ‘Belle’; Miami’s own Phil Lord, the director of ‘The LEGO Movie’; and Mercedes Gamero, one of Spain’s most prolific producers. And for the Knight Documentary Achievement Award this is the first year we’ve asked the audience to help us select the winner. We really want to hear from the audience about which is their favorite film.”

Every attendee will receive one ballot to rate films on a scale of 1 to 5 — but that’s only one piece of the final score. Final scores are calculated by multiplying the total average score of the ballots cast for each movie by the number of ballots cast expressed as a percentage of the total available seats available for each screening. “It’s a bit of a complex formula,” says Laplante. “But I believe it ultimately really rewards the audience favorite.”

(As an incentive, those attending and voting in at least one film eligible for the Knight Documentary Achievement Award will be entered to win a guest pass for two good for free admission for a year to Cinépolis Coconut Grove.)

As for the broad thematic diversity of the entries in the documentary category, Laplante notes that the festival has five programmers, and all are represented with their choices.

“Lee Brian Schrager, our culinary programmer, has two documentaries in his category that are eligible for the prize [‘City of Gold’ and ‘Finding Gastón’]; Andres Castillo is a musician and music writer from Ecuador and his specialty is music films, so he selected music documentaries [such as ‘The Record Man,’ and ‘Paco de Lucia: A Journey’], and Carole Coombes, who programs our spot on Asia, programmed an incredible documentary, [‘The Land of Many Palaces’], a film about one of China’s ghost cities. They made this city for a million people to live in, full of skyscrapers and it’s empty; nobody lives there. It’s an incredible variety of choices. The one thing that unites them is that they are all eligible for the award.”

The 32nd Miami International Film Festival runs March 6-15. Visit miamifilmfestival.com for more information.

Fernando González is a South Florida-based arts and culture writer.