2023 CaribbeanLens Film Festival - OPENING NIGHT

Opening night screens include films on Haiti, Jamaica, Canada.

Our feature is the completed HappySAD in Trinidad. The uncompleted version debuted in 2010.

HappySAD is a touching coming of age story of love, pain, victory, and redemption that takes the audience through a series of unexpected dramatic twists and turns. Seventeen-year-old Mandy Graham, (Caribbean actress Angel Ross in a breakout role) is a high school soccer (football) player, intent on making something out her life and desperate not to fall victim to the failures of her parents.

But Mandy’s hopes and dreams are thwarted when she is forced to leave Trinidad to live in Tobago with her great-uncle Cephas, a colorful, passionate, American ex-pat with a lust for life, but who is much too distracted by his hot, young girlfriend to pay Mandy any attention.

The film was shot almost entirely in Tobago with some scenes being shot in Trinidad. The entire cast, with the exception of world renowned American actor Bill Cobbs (Uncle Cephas), was drawn from actors in Trinidad and Tobago.

Special THANK YOU to the HOLLYWOOD FOREIGN PRESS ASSOCIATION for their generous support.

Host or Publisher Caribbean Heritage Organization, Inc.