Key Biscayne’s Film Festival Expands With a New Cinema on the Island

Key Biscayne’s new arthouse-like cinema, Paradise Cinema, is one of the main venues for the Key Biscayne Film Festival, which enters its third year with a full program starting Thursday, Jan. 29 through Sunday, Feb. 1. (Photo courtesy of Village of Key Biscayne)

The Key Biscayne Film Festival was an idea that emerged during the planning of what would probably have been a hit with television audiences — a reality show about life on Key Biscayne. Isabel Custer and Maite Garrido wanted to make a documentary reality series starring the characters that live on the island.

“Maite was a producer for news for many years, and we wanted to do a documentary style, reality series of what it’s like to live on Key Biscayne,” says Custer, a filmmaker and producer.

As they were in the midst of casting calls and production meetings, Garrido mentioned that the island should have its own film festival.

The reality series never materialized – the production company “felt it needed more star power to carry the show,” says Custer. So the pair dropped the idea and became fully immersed in creating the Key Biscayne Film Festival.

The Village Chambers has been transformed into a dual-use space spurred by the popularity of the Key Biscayne Film Festival. (Photo courtesy of Village of Key Biscayne)

The Key Biscayne Film Festival (KBFF) opens Thursday, Jan. 29, with Peruvian feature film “Mistura” directed by Ricardo de Montreuil. Custer, who is Peruvian, says that the movie seems like something that would resonate with a lot of Key Biscayne’s Latin American community. “I thought it would be nice to include a feature film along with our documentaries. It’s from Latin America and so much of Key Biscayne is Latin American.”

Released in Peru in 2025, the story is set in 1960s Peru and stars Bárbara Mori as a wealthy French-Peruvian woman whose life falls apart after her husband leaves her for another woman. She embarks on a culinary journey that transforms her life.

“It is a beautiful film,” says Custer.

In this, its third year, the festival has a new addition. Screenings will be shown in the newly transformed Paradise Cinema inside the Village Council Chambers. In the past two years, Custer says, films were shown in one of the rooms of The Community Center – not the best setting for a movie theater experience.

Isabel Custer, co-founder, festival director and programmer of the Key Biscayne Film Festival, taken on the set of her movie “As You Like It – Like That!” (Photo by Debbie Gold, courtesy of Isabel Custer)

“We’re lucky enough that the village council set aside a budget to create the mini cinema, sort of the size of an art house cinema,” says Custer, the festival’s director and programmer. “Now we have ideal surroundings, at least, and it’s growing in the sense that we also have more directors or filmmakers coming than ever, which is extremely exciting; producers and directors and actors coming to talk about their films.”

For the first time, the festival is crossing the causeway to UM’s Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science (RSMAS) .including a Friday screening of films with an environmental focus. The headlining film is Sasha Wortzel’s “River of Grass.”

In the documentary, Wortzel in voiceover says, “Marjory came to me in a dream,” speaking about Marjory Stoneman Douglas. “I knew she was a celebrated environmentalist, but I wanted to know more, so I went looking for her.”

The film takes its title from Douglas’s 1947 book “The Everglades: River of Grass” and is guided through the writings of Douglas and looks at the people who live in and protect the region today.

Miccosukee educator Betty Osceola on her airboat in the documentary “River of Grass.” The Key Biscayne Film Festival will show the film at UM’s RSMAS on Friday, Jan 30. (Photo courtesy of Sasha Wortzel and Walking Productions)

 “Sasha’s film is very important and very beautifully executed,” says Custer, adding that the auditorium at the RSMAS can accommodate a few hundred filmgoers. 

“We thought that it would draw a crowd and well deserved… we’re opening it up to not just Key Biscayne residents, but also university students or grad students that are already interested in marine biology and nature and the environment.”

“River of Grass” has earned awards in Florida and across the country including the Florida Filmmaker Award at the Tallahassee Film Festival and the Florida Film Critics Circle’s Golden Orange Award as well as winner of the International Documentary Association’s IDA Award.

On Saturday, Jan. 31, the festival heads outdoors to Paradise Park for its awards ceremony and a screening of Herschel Faber’s “Ethan Bloom.”

While Faber’s comedy feature has some casting choices out of Hollywood –Mindy Sterling who played Frau Farbissina in the “Austin Powers” movie series, Joshua Melina known for his role as Will Bailey on “The West Wing” and Hank Greenspan from the television series “The Neighborhood” as Ethan Bloom – the film is set in Coconut Grove and Coral Gables. The director says he got his first job as a production assistant when Mike Nichols was filming “The Birdcage” in Miami Beach. “This is where I got my start. My roots are here.” He also made his first movie in Miami, “Chasing Pavarotti,” a short film shot in Miami Beach. 

Herschel Faber directs Joshua Melina on the set of his made in Miami film “Ethan Bloom.” (Photo courtesy of the filmmaker)

“Ethan Bloom” is about a 13-year-old Jewish kid who secretly wants to become a Catholic. Although he spent his growing years in New Smyrna Beach, Fla., Farber says his childhood was spent in Miami Beach where his father grew up. “I had a real nostalgia for the Grove and the Gables,” he says. “This is a uniquely Miami movie.”

At the beginning of the year, distributor Menemsha Films acquired the rights to Faber’s film, and it is expected to launch it in movie theaters across North America. 

Faber will be at the screening to discuss his film on the festival’s closing night.

Other films showing at the festival include documentaries “Blue Zeus,”  about a wild horse and the fight to save him and his family from a flawed government system, “News without a Newsroom,” which explores journalism’s uncertain future, “Marlee Maitlin: Not Alone Anymore,” about the Oscar winners breakthrough in Hollywood as a deaf actress, and local filmmakers Dennis Scholl and Kareem Tabsch’s documentary “Naked Ambition” about Miami Beach-based model-turned photographer Bunny Yeager. Scholl will lead a question and answer after the screening for the festival’s final day on Sunday, Feb. 1. 

Miami Beach artist, model, photographer, feminist pioneer and icon Bunny Yeager is the subject of Dennis Scholl and Kareem Tabsch’s movie “Naked Ambition” showing at the Key Biscayne Film Festival’s final day on Sunday, Feb. 1. (Photo courtesy of Music Box Films)

There are plenty of other films showing throughout the weekend.

See the complete program here. 

But the festival isn’t only about watching films—it’s about nurturing the next generation of storytellers, according to Custer. “One of the other important pillars for us is education. Every fall, I organize a workshop called the Youth Filmmakers Workshop to make sure that students, mostly middle and high school, learn the craft of storytelling through film,” says Custer. Young filmmakers from Key Biscayne’s “It Takes a Village” will show their films in the “Spotlight on Youth Showcase” on Sunday, Feb. 1 along with those from Custer’s workshop. “Its an important part of this youth film roster to have those with learning disabilities or on the spectrum – those with different abilities making films and having them seen.”

Custer doesn’t want film in Key Biscayne to be relegated to once a year. With the new Paradise Cinema, she says there are opportunities to show more movies throughout the year — and to keep the festival’s momentum beyond a single weekend.

“Maybe not every single week, but at least once or twice a month — get screenings like a movie theater would and grow our film festival audience that way. That’s how we’re going to find the people who really love film, who are going to come to the festival.”

WHAT: The Third Annual Key Biscayne Film Festival

WHERE: Paradise Cinema, 560 Crandon Boulevard, Key Biscayne; Paradise Park, 530 Crandon Boulevard, Key Biscayne; UM RSMAS, 4600 Rickenbacker Causeway, Virginia Key.

WHEN: Thursday, Jan. 29 through Sunday, Feb. 1.

COST: Costs vary from free admission to $20 general admission and $50 reception and cocktail party tickets.

INFORMATION: kbfilmfestival.org/

 ArtburstMiami.com is a nonprofit media source for the arts featuring fresh and original stories by writers dedicated to theater, dance, visual arts, film, music and more. Don’t miss a story at www.artburstmiami.com