Documentaries help communities understand their past and imagine a better future. This year, six Miami‑based filmmakers will take up that mantle as recipients of The Louies, an initiative presented by the Miami Film Festival and sponsored by the Lynn & Louis Wolfson II Family Foundation. Now in its second year, the award will provide a combined $100,000 to support new films that illuminate the stories, cultural identities, and iconic figures that define South Florida’s past and present.
In addition to funding, recipients will have the opportunity to premiere their work at future editions of the Miami Film Festival and receive unlimited access to the Lynn & Louis Wolfson II Florida Moving Image Archives at Miami Dade College.
The Winners:
Feature-Length Documentary Winner ($50,000)
Kareem Tabsch – Save Our Children
The film revisits singer and beauty queen Anita Bryant’s explosive 1977 Miami crusade, a campaign that became the blueprint for modern attacks on queer Americans and equality. Save Our Children explores how a celebrity singer overturned the city’s anti‑discrimination ordinance by wielding religion, fear, and misinformation to cast gay and lesbian people as threats to children.
Short Documentary ($10,000 each)
Matt Deblinger – 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 and culminated in a landmark Supreme Court ruling on creative freedom. Matt Deblinger, director and co-producer; Diliana Alexander, producer.
Jessica Huppert Berman – Twin Suns: The Scull Sisters Story profiles Miami’s iconic Scull sisters—identical twins and Cuban artists whose colorful, three‑dimensional paintings became beloved fixtures in Cuban restaurants and cultural spaces, creating an artistic bridge between Havana and Miami.
Monica Sorelle – Untitled Everglades Triptych examines Black and Indigenous histories in and around the Everglades through distinct but parallel stories of migration, refuge, and displacement.
Finishing Funds ($10,000 each)
Forrest Canaday – First Come, First Serve tells the story of the Swap Shops flea market through three intertwining narratives: its rise as an unlikely economic and cultural hub, the personal and artistic journey of Marie Franco, a painter who grew up there, and the uncertainty of its future in a rapidly changing South Florida. Forrest Canaday, Lead Producer, Ermol Clearfoster Sheppard II, Director.
Carlos Gutierrez – 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.
