Miami Filmmakers Win 2026 Louies Awards, Share $100K in Prize Money For Florida Stories

Louies Award winner “First Come, First Serve” tells the story of the Swap Shops flea market through three intertwining narratives. Forrest Canaday, lead producer and Ermol Clearfoster Sheppard II, director, received a $10,000 award in the Finishing Funds category. (Photo courtesy of The Louies/Miami Film Festival)

The film “captures the Swap Shop as it stands today, before the forces of development and time decide what comes next,” said Canaday.

When director Ermol Clearfoster Sheppard III was notified he won a Louies Award, he shouted a happy expletive, kissed his cat, called his mom, and went out and bought a $12 latte. Matt Deblinger, co-producer and director of “Uncle Luke vs. America,” said he celebrated by listening to 2 Live Crew’s “Banned in the USA” and “got fired up.”

Kareem Tabsch says he view his Louies Award like “a badge of honor.”

The three local filmmakers are part of a group of six that were selected as recipients of The Louies presented by the Miami Film Festival and sponsored by the Lynn and Louis Wolfson II Family Foundation. The Louies, now in its second year, provides funding for new films that focus on South Florida’s past and present.

The awards total $100,000.

Kareem Tabsch’s “Save Our Children” about Anita Bryant’s anti-gay crusade in the late 1970s received the biggest prize, $50,000 in the Feature Length Documentary category. (Photo courtesy of The Louie Awards/Miami Film Festival)

Tabsch received the largest prize, $50,000 for his feature-length documentary, “Save Our Children,” which revisits Anita Bryant’s 1977 Miami crusade. The singer, television personality and former beauty queen launched a campaign to overturn a Miami-Dade County ordinance that banned discrimination based on sexual orientation for employment and housing.  Her misinformation claims cast gay and lesbian people as threats to children.

Tabsch, who co-founded and co-directs O Cinema in Miami Beach, co-directed the 2018 film “The Last Resort” with Dennis Scholl as well as the 2024 documentary “Naked Ambition” with Scholl. His film, “Mucho Mucho Amor: The Legend of Walter Mercado” was named by The New York Times as one of the 20 Essential Latino Films in 2020.

According to the filmmaker, his most recent work connects the past with the present.

“This is a film as much about that moment five decades ago as it is about today . . . how today’s attacks are rooted in a 50-year-old playbook. It’s at once a history lesson and a call to arms to inspire the next generation to get involved in changing the world we live in,” he explains, calling the funding from The Louies “a shot in the arm in moving the film forward.”

In addition to the award money, each filmmaker receives unlimited access to the Lynn and Louis Wolfson II Florida Moving Image Archives at Miami Dade College.

“The access to the incredible Wolfson Archives is a game changer,” Tabsch says, adding that “a huge aspect of our story is documented in the Wolfson archives. . .”

Matt Deblinger”s “Uncle Luke vs. America (working title) explores how Miami became a 1990s free‑speech battleground as Luther “Uncle Luke” Campbell’s explicit tracks ignited obscenity charges. (Photo courtesy of The Louie Awards/Miami Film Festival)

Sheppard, who is directing “First Come, First Serve,” with lead producer Forrest Canaday, describes the film—which tells the story of the Swap Shop flea market through three intertwining narratives—as a “community engagement project.”

The Louies award granted $10,000 to the filmmakers in the Finishing Funds category.

“I’d say the core message of our documentary is exemplified through the story of the main participant (and producer) Marie Franco. She spent her formative years at the Swap Shop while her mother was working as a vendor there, then dedicated her artistic practice to painting portraits of the people in that community.”

In addition to helping fund the post production process, the money will also give a boost to the filmmakers vision of “immersive installations” the will presented in tandem with the documentary.

Also receiving a $10,000 Finishing Funds award is Carlos Gutierrez whose documentary “Bay of Pigs” focuses on the men of Brigade 2506 who returned to Miami after the Kennedy-era failed invasion of Cuba.

Carlos Gutierrez’s “The Bay of Pigs Project” offers a deeply personal look at the men who returned to Miami after the Kennedy-era failed invasion of Cuba to rebuild their lives, raise families and forge a new community. (Photo courtesy of The Louie Awards/Miami Film Festival)

“History isn’t just dates and politics — it’s people. ‘Bay of Pigs’ is about what happens when ordinary individuals are pulled into extraordinary events, and how the consequences follow them for the rest of their lives.”

As far as winning the award, Gutierrez says, “’The Bay of Pigs’ is such a personal, generational story in Miami, and it’s also heavy. So hearing that The Louies wanted to stand behind it felt like someone saying, ‘This history matters, and these voices matter’ “

“The Bay of Pigs” is the kind of film that Randi Wolfson Adamo, trustee of the Lynn and Louis Wolfson II Family Foundation, said the awards is meant to help thrive.

“South Florida is full of powerful stories and passionate storytellers, and The Louies give us a chance to help those voices be heard,” says Wolfson Adamo.

In the short documentary category, which carries a $10,000 prize, is Deblinger, director of “Uncle Luke vs. America” who is co-producing the film with Diliana Alexander, about Miami becoming a 1990s free‑speech battleground. Describing his film as a crossover between legal advocacy and nonfiction storytelling, Luther “Uncle Luke” Campbell’s explicit tracks ignited obscenity charges and culminated in a landmark Supreme Court ruling on creative freedom.

“Freedom of expression isn’t automatic. It’s shaped in our courts, developed through case law, and always at risk of being challenged. All it takes is one case against one artist to redefine creative rights across the country, for better or worse, for generations to come.”

Jessica Huppert Berman’s short documentary “Twin Suns: The Scull Sisters Story” profiles Miami’s iconic Cuban artist sisters. (Photo courtesy of The Louie Awards/Miami Film Festival)

Jessica Hupper Berman also received $10,000 towards work on her short documentary. “Twin Suns: The Scull Sisters Story” profiles identical twins and Cuban artists whose colorful, three‑dimensional paintings became beloved fixtures in Cuban restaurants in Miami before they all but disappeared from public spaces severing what had established an artistic bridge between Havana and Miami.

“The grant will allow me to elevate the film’s visual language, which feels essential for a project rooted in painting. It will also support music and art licensing that deepen the film’s emotional and historical resonance,” says Hupper Berman, who added that her documentary “asks how cultural memory is formed, and what it means to preserve it – not as nostalgia but as an act of attention.”

Monica Sorelle, whose 2023 film “Mountains” with  producer and co-writer Robert Colom  was created with help from a $50,000 micro-budget grant through the Oolite Arts Cinematic Arts Residency, received a $10,000 short documentary award from this year’s The Louies.

Monica Sorelle’s “Untitled Everglades Triptych” examines Black and Indigenous histories in and around the Everglades through distinct but parallel stories of migration, refuge and displacement. (Photo courtesy of The Louie Awards/Miami Film Festival)

The Haitian-American filmmaker examines Black and Indigenous histories in and around the Everglades in “Untitled Everglades Triptych.”

Honorable mentions went to Jon David Kane, Alicia Edwards and Oana Martisca.

Three Louies winners from 2025 – Jayme Kaye Gershen (“The Floor Remembers”), Symone Titania Major (“Under the Mango Tree”), and Rachelle Salnave (“Dual Citizen”) – will premiere their films at the upcoming Miami Film Festival, which runs April 9 through 19, 2026.

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