Green Days for Caribbean

Cindy Ann Galt presents award to Green Days By the River director Michael Mooledhar during the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival in September.
Cindy Ann Galt presents award to Green Days By the River director Michael Mooledhar during the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival in September.

Award-winning local drama Green Days by the River will be screened in five Caribbean countries from next month.

Director Michael Mooledhar told Newsday the film would be shown in Antigua, Barbados, Grenada, Guyana and St Lucia from January 11, 2018.

“We are very excited to have it play in the Caribbean,” Mooledhar said.

Based on the novel by local writer and historian Michael Anthony, Green Days by the River’s coming of age story is set in Mayaro 1952 and centres around a teenager named Shellie (Sudai Tafari) who is befriended by a plantation owner named Mr Gidharee (Anand Lawkaran), and falls for his beautiful daughter Rosalie (Nadia Nisha Kandhai). The film was produced by Christian James, who Mooledhar pointed out, began the film when he was single and during the course of making it and distributing it, got married and recently had a baby boy.

Green days launched the TT Film Festival (ttff) 2017 and was also the big winner, capturing the awards for both best TT feature and people’s choice for best feature film narrative. The film then opened in local cinemas and Mooledhar said it had been well received. He said they hope to mirror the local success of the film in the Caribbean and the length of the run is dependent on ticket sales.

The film screened at the Belize Film Festival last month and showed at various schools. He said this was the first test of the response to the film outside of Trinidad and they had a really good reception with schoolchildren loving the movie.

The new "retro" poster for the film Green Days by the River.

Mooledhar said they are confirming some other Caribbean territories and plan to have the film in Jamaica and St Kitts. He explained there is no regional distributor and they have to do individual deals.

He said they are targeting countries with the Caribbean Examinations Council curriculum where Green Days has featured on the literature syllabus, as these places would have had previous exposure to the book and the producers would not have to do a lot of marketing. He said they will also have premiere events wherever they are getting “the most love.”

Mooledhar said they have an “inside out” approach where they started in this country, moving to the Caribbean and then the diaspora in Brooklyn, Miami, Toronto and London, and then on other platforms and services. Fellow local film The Cutlass recently announced it will be appearing on Video on Demand in North America from December 12.

Mooledhar said after Green Days completes its run they definitely want to have it find a home on Video on Demand which is a route to maximise monetisation and he believes it is the way of future rather than DVD which you cannot control.

“It is showing the film have a life after Trinidad.”

This month the film will premiere at both the Bahamas International Film Festival and the Havana Film Festival and then in January it will premiere at the Barbados Independent Film Festival.

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