Born in Miami, growing out of the city’s unique Caribbean roots, Third Horizon is the bridge between filmmakers and audiences, filmmakers and each other. A bridge between art and community, and a meeting point for those invested in revelatory cinematic visions of the Caribbean, its diaspora and the third world.

Third Horizon Film Festival (THFF) was first dreamed up by two separate platforms: Third Horizon in Miami, and Caribbean Film Academy in New York. An earlier incarnation of Third Horizon, founded in 2013, came together as a Caribbean filmmaking collective which produced award-winning short films such as “Papa Machete” and “T”. Caribbean Film Academy (CAFA), founded in 2012, began by screening Caribbean films in a storefront in Brooklyn, eventually expanding into local cinemas and distributing films online. 

Recognizing a shared vision for a gathering place for exchange between filmmakers from the global Caribbean and their cutting-edge cinema, the two organizations launched THFF in 2016 in Miami, and eventually merged under the reinvigorated banner of Third Horizon in 2020.

At every step of its evolution, Third Horizon has grounded itself at the intersection of South Florida’s Caribbean and art communities. For its first three years, the THFF was staged in Wynwood, a historically Puerto Rican neighborhood, before moving on to Little Haiti. Today, the festival continues in Little Havana, one of the country’s most enduring Cuban enclaves.