The feature lineup includes work from Colombia, Chile, Brazil, and Sweden, as well as from local filmmakers and the rest of the US. If you’re a genre fan like myself you may not find much to love here, but there are movies on the treatment of women by the Catholic Church (Created Equal), the post-apocalypse (Last Broken Darkness), and a one-last-score crime thriller (Carter & June). The fest’s workshops look promising, too, with a bevy of practically minded sessions for aspiring filmmakers, screenwriters, and actors: although hosting separate workshops called “Finding the Female/Male Voice” is perplexingly retrograde. The MTV Movie Awards dumped gender-segregated acting categories; let’s follow their example!
The fest’s press release quotes St. Pete/Clearwater film commissioner Tony Armer saying, “Sunscreen has become a widely recognized festival around the world. I travel to festivals like Cannes, Sundance and Toronto every year and I can see it growing to have an impact like those fests.” With more and more film festivals popping up in the Tampa Bay area every year, the competition is getting tighter, and hopefully the end result is sharper, better programming at each fest.
This article appears in Apr 20-27, 2017.