NEW DELHI: Eighteen films will be competing to receive the Havana Star Prize for Best Film, Best Director and Best Screenplay, as well as the Havana Star Prize for Best Documentary at the 16th Havana Film Festival in New York

The awards will be announced at the festival's Closing Night Ceremony on 17 April at the Directors Guild Theatre. The Festival commences from 9 April.

Prominent members of Latino culture and film industry will choose the winning films. In the fiction category, the jury includes director and screenwriter Alberto Ferreras (HBO's Habla series, Que Viva la Musica); film producer and director of Festival International del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano de la Habana Ivan Giroud; and actress and singer Cristina Morrison.

In the documentary category, the jury will include director and producer Catherine Murphy (Maestra); director and cinematographer German Gutierrez (Coca-Cola Case, Who Shot my Brother) and Assistant Professor of Spanish and Portuguese, Fairfield University, Michelle Farell.

The films in competition come from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Nicaragua, United States, Uruguay and Venezuela.

Many of the filmmakers will be in New York to present their films. A majority of the films will have their American premieres at the Festival.

The films competing for the Havana Star Prize in Fiction are: Refugiado (Diego Lerman, Argentina); Road 47 (Vicente Ferraz, Brazil), Natural Disasters (Bernardo Quesney, Chile), Wasting Time (Alexander Giraldo, Colombia),Boccacio in Havana (Arturo Sotto, Cuba), The Wall Of Words (Fernando Perez, Cuba); His Wedding Dress (Marilyn Solaya, Cuba); Venice (Kiki Alvarez, Cuba – Colombia); Open Cage (Maximiliano Zunino, Mexico); and Kaplan (Alvaro Brencher, Uruguay).

The documentary films competing for the Havana Star Prize in Documentary are: A Matter of Land (Patricia Ayala, Colombia); Omara: Cuba (Lester Hamlet, Cuba); Another Island (Heidi Hassan, Cuba – Switzerland); You and Me (Natalia Cabral and Oriol Estrada, Dominican Republic); All of Me (Arturo Gonzalez Villasenor, Mexico); The Troublemaker, Behind the Scenes of the United Nations (Roberto Salinas, Nicaragua - US – Italy); Havana Curveball (Marcia Jarmel & Ken Schneider, US – Cuba); and The Silence Of The Flies (Eliezer Arias, Venezuela).

HFFNY is made possible with public funds from the NYS Council on the Arts, a state agency, and supported, in part, by public funds from the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs.

The Havana Film Festival New York is a project of American Friends of the Ludwig Foundation of Cuba (AFLFC), a non-profit organization that builds cultural bridges between the U.S. and Cuba through programmes in the arts.