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Building community through film from Knight Foundation on Vimeo. Back for the 31st time, the Miami International Film Festival, presented by Miami Dade College’s MDCulture program, will unfurl 120 films over 10 days starting Friday, March 7, and running through March 16 at locations all over Greater Miami. It’s a rich smorgasbord of cinema from around the world. RELATED LINK "Top directors covet slot at Miami International Film Festival" by Rene Rodriguez in the Miami Herald The festival opens Friday night with a screening of Michael Radford’s “Elsa and Fred,” starring Christopher Plummer and Shirley MacLaine, at the Gusman Center for the Performing Arts’ Olympia Theater. The festival comes to a formal close on March 15 with an Awards Night screening of Raymond De Felitta’s “Rob the Mob,” starring Andy Garcia. In between the festival will host films from 32 countries and award $61,000 in prize money to competing filmmakers. $50,000 comes directly from support by Knight Foundation, which sponsors two of the festival’s signature competitions. The Knight Competition focuses on narrative films from Latin America, Spain and Portugal, awarding $40,000 in prize money to the winner. Meanwhile the Knight Documentary Competition, which focuses on international documentary film across many regions, themes and styles, bestows its winner with $10,000 in prize money. Among the 10 films competing for each prize are two world premieres: Marcelo Tobar’s “Asteroid,” about a pair of adult siblings in Mexico who are reunited after seven years following their parents’ untimely demise, and Jorge Duran’s “Memories of the Desert,” about a young Brazilian novelist who hitchhikes into the Chilean desert for seclusion only to become embroiled in a murder plot.
