WILLEMSTAD - The Film Fund has selected twelve projects from the ABC Islands for the inaugural round of 'Studio Caribe,' as announced by the Netherlands Film Fund in a press release. 

The Fund received nearly 60 applications in total. The chosen filmmakers from Curaçao, Bonaire, and Aruba will now enter a coaching program. In September, they will attend several workshops to further develop their film plans for a short fiction, documentary, animation, or experimental film. Ultimately, six of the twelve projects will be selected for the production of a short film. Each project will receive 10,000 euros. 

The first cohort of creators and projects for Studio Caribe includes ALA (short animation), Bibu (fiction), Campo: The Untold Stories (documentary), Wow’i Asombro / Verwonderaar (fiction), Close to Home (fiction), Si Mi Ke (documentary), and E Herensia (fiction). Other selected projects are Hidden Hurt (fiction), Perdí (fiction), Adrift / Wak Leu (experimental film), Kontakto (Contact) (fiction), and The Clubhouse (short fiction). 

With Studio Caribe, the Film Fund aims to enrich films with original stories from and about the islands. According to the Film Fund, the range of submissions was very rich and diverse.