“Gods of the Universe: Rise of the Star Child” will make its Caribbean debut at the Trinidad & Tobago Film Festival with special Storytime screenings designed for family audiences. The film will be shown on Saturday, Sept. 27, at 10 a.m. at the IMAX Cinema, and again on Sunday, Sept. 28, at 10 a.m. at the 4DX Cinema.
Local filmmaker Cathy SitaRam wrote, directed and produced the sci-fi film. She is also one of the cast.
The Trinidad & Tobago Film Festival celebrates films from and about the Caribbean and its diaspora through a flagship annual festival, a Carnival film series, and a UK-based screening series, as well as other year-round screenings. TTFF also seeks to nurture the growth of Caribbean cinema by offering a wide-ranging industry program and networking opportunities.
Film Details:
Director: Cathay SitaRam
Language: English
Country: Trinidad and Tobago
Year: 2024
Genre: Adventure
Length: Short
Runtime: 20 minutes
Cast: Nickolai Salceso, Zane Foster, Genesis Belgrove, Cathy SitaRam
Synopsis: Advanced beings must train star children to guide humanity to the next stage of evolution before a catastrophic event destroys Earth, but their methods differ and time is running out.
“Gods of the Universe: Rise of the Star Child” is celebrated at the annual TTFF in the sci-fi category. Writer, producer, director Cathy SitaRam had a [REM] dream some 10 years ago, which manifested in this sci-fi film. SitaRam began to write and rewrite the film story over the past decade until she was satisfied with the outcome. It was a “labor of love” for the artist. She was grounded in the significance of the theme and her passion drove her to continue through three different crews and countless shoots during the production.
SitaRam was born in Trinidad to Trinidadian parents and was raised by them on St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands. She studied radio, TV, and film at the University of Maryland and minored in theater. She studied advanced film/TV writing classes at the University of Southern California and worked as a broadcast journalist in Los Angeles. SitaRam continued as a journalist in the U.S. Virgin Islands. She later migrated to Trinidad when the Trinidad & Tobago Film Company was seeking projects to fund. She submitted her film. They liked it and helped a lot in structuring the film, she said. They began work on it in 2016 to write, develop, and shoot it. The film’s final cut was made in 2024.
“I think this is what I was put here to do,” SitaRam said of the sci-fi theme of her work. “I’ve done some documentaries and commercials and produced loads of news segments, documentary TV shows, and other short live-action films. This is my first sci-fi film and it has given me more joy, more of a feeling of purpose than all the others,” SitaRam expressed with a jubilant sound in her voice.
That jubilance is echoed in the critiques offered by several of Sitaram’s audience at the film festivals where “Gods” was screened. The film garnered numerous awards and credits at the following events:
Southern Shorts Awards; Black Writers Weekend Pitch Fest; Charlotte Black Film Festival; Kwanzaa Film Festival; Trinidad & Tobago Film Company; United Nations World Space Week; Denton Black Film Festival; and the People’s Film Festival.
The Trinidad and Tobago film festival is a film festival in the Anglophone Caribbean. The festival was initially conceived in 2005 by film historian, academic, and producer Bruce Paddington, with the unique intention of showing only Caribbean films. This remains the festival’s purpose today, which takes place annually in Trinidad and Tobago. The festival will run Sept. 24-30, with 88 films from 20 countries.
For more information:
sitaramstudios.tv
sitaramstudios@gmail.com
ttfilmfestival.com
@ttfilmfestival
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