The 37th edition of the Miami Film Festival, which was slated to run March 6 to 15 but was canceled mid-run on March 12 due to the coronavirus outbreak, has announced its award winners, with Josh Kriegman, Elyse Steinberg and Eli Despres' The Fight and Aeden O'Connor Agurcia's 90 Minutes claiming audience awards, and Samuel Kishi Leopo's Los Lobos and Gonzalo Maza's This Is Cristina taking top jury prizes.
Jury awards were either completed before cancellation or through a virtual judging process, while audience awards were chosen from those films that were able to have a public screening before the fest came to an end four days ahead of schedule.
A portrait of contemporary Honduras through the lens of its societal obsession with soccer, 90 Minutes, was awarded the fest’s Toyota Narrative Feature Film Audience Award over 44 other titles. And The Fight, a Magnolia film from the directors of Weiner that depicts the struggles of a quartet of ACLU lawyers as they work on hot-button issues, was awarded the newly created Toyota Documentary Feature Film Audience Award over 20 other titles.
Meanwhile, a jury determined that the HBO Ibero-American Feature Film Award, which comes with a $10,000 prize, would go to Los Lobos, a semiautobiographical immigration story from Mexico. A different jury determined that another $10,000 prize would go to This Is Cristina, which marks the directorial debut of its Chilean helmer.
Jayro Bustamante's La Llorona claimed the Knight Marimbas Award — and the $40,000 prize that comes with it — intended for "the film that best exemplifies richness and resonance for cinema's future."
And a poll of all critics covered the 37th Miami Film Fest determined that this year's Rene Rodriguez Critics Award, named for Miami Herald writer Rene Rodriguez, would go to Yowan Lewis and Calvin Thomas' White Lie, a Canadian film.
