Ghana-born T&T film­mak­er Yao Rame­sar has won yet an­oth­er award, this time in Cana­da—Best Film at the In­ter­na­tion­al Mo­tion Pic­ture Awards in Toron­to.

Bask­ing in his suc­cess, Rame­sar said “grat­i­tude is a must,” as he ex­tend­ed love to all. But for the cre­ative who has put T&T on the map yet again, “the jour­ney con­tin­ues.”

Rame­sar, in an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian, said he had been di­rect­ing fea­tures in In­dia and South Africa and was back in Trinidad at­tend­ing a fu­ner­al in Tu­na­puna in 2017 when the idea for For­tune For All struck him and “jumped the queue in front of those oth­er films in pro­duc­tion.”

While the last sur­viv­ing broth­er was de­liv­er­ing the eu­lo­gy for his old­er sib­ling, Rame­sar said some­thing clicked. “So I left the cer­e­mo­ny, crossed the East­ern Main Road, and en­tered a bar, where I asked for a nap­kin and a pen. I sat there, sweat­ing in my suit, and start­ed writ­ing the sto­ry of the For­tune sib­lings, who lost their el­dest broth­er to a mys­te­ri­ous ill­ness sweep­ing their is­land.”

Life seemed to im­i­tate art, as prin­ci­pal pho­tog­ra­phy was in full swing when they were forced to shut down pro­duc­tion in 2020 due to COVID-19. It wasn’t un­til two years lat­er that they were able to re­sume. But Rame­sar said pick­ing up the pieces of the film proved a re­al chal­lenge be­cause “it was like falling in love and hav­ing a heart at­tack ear­ly in the ro­mance.”

It takes a lot of men­tal and emo­tion­al en­er­gy to get a film off the ground, he said, “so re-en­gag­ing with the nar­ra­tive and the phys­i­cal re­al­i­ty of the pro­duc­tion was tor­tur­ous.” The re­sult­ing fea­ture, For­tune For All (2023), be­came a re­flec­tion on one fam­i­ly’s life, love, and loss in con­tem­po­rary T&T, of­fer­ing a glimpse in­to the mul­ti-di­men­sion­al world of the Caribbean mid­dle class and the res­o­nance of its rich lan­guage.

Re­unit­ed by their el­dest broth­er Ato’s death, Ad­do, Kessie, and Adom For­tune re­treat to the fam­i­ly’s sea­side es­tate for a pe­ri­od of be­reave­ment, where they be­gin talk­ing af­ter years of si­lence.

Their griev­ing moth­er, Ed­na, re­mains in iso­la­tion on their near­by farm. Ad­do For­tune (Michael Cher­rie), reel­ing from the loss of his fa­ther, broth­er, and fi­ancée, is strug­gling to com­plete his sopho­more nov­el.

Kessie (Sama­ra Lal­lo), the youngest For­tune, a ris­ing le­gal lu­mi­nary, finds her­self bal­anc­ing her pri­vate and pro­fes­sion­al lives while me­di­at­ing be­tween her war­ring broth­ers.

Adom (Nick­o­lai Sal­cedo), the youngest broth­er, is nav­i­gat­ing his first cam­paign for po­lit­i­cal of­fice while fend­ing off charges from his soon-to-be ex-wife and the re­sult­ing me­dia storm.

Their moth­er, Ed­na, is try­ing to come to terms with the sud­den deaths of her hus­band and el­dest son.

For­tune for All is a lit­er­al­ly in­dige­nous fea­ture, as the cast, crew, and opera singer who per­forms the sound­track are all from T&T.

The French and Span­ish trans­la­tions for the For­tune For All sub­ti­tles were done by Earl and Kam­la Best and Owen Thomp­son, re­spec­tive­ly, from T&T, who has a com­mand of our nu­anced lan­guage that need­ed to be con­veyed.

For­tune for All first screened in 2023, start­ing its jour­ney in Cairo, Egypt, and Is­chia, Italy, at the largest sum­mer screen­ing event in the world. Dur­ing the T&T Film Fes­ti­val 2023, For­tune For All was show­ing si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly in oth­er fes­ti­vals like the African Film Fes­ti­val At­lanta, so Rame­sar was ac­tu­al­ly do­ing dou­ble du­ty—on the ground in Trinidad in per­son and vir­tu­al­ly in the US and else­where. “Af­ter TTFF, the film’s co-pro­duc­er Kam­la Best trav­elled to Cannes for our French pre­miere at Le Fes­ti­val In­ter­na­tion­al du Film PanAfricain de Cannes, where we were up for Best Film, Best Ac­tress, Best Ac­tor, and Ju­ry awards.

“The Timehri Film Fes­ti­val in Guyana and the Be­lize In­ter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val fol­lowed, which were cru­cial in terms of screen­ing to Caribbean, Cen­tral and South Amer­i­can au­di­ences,” Rame­sar said.

“For­tune For All’s In­di­an and Asian pre­miere was at the In­ter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val of In­dia GOA (IF­FI GOA), In­dia’s ma­jor film fes­ti­val and one of the fore­most in the world.” Of course, the re­la­tion­ship be­tween In­di­an and T&T films has been a one-way street so far, Rame­sar said, as we have been watch­ing In­di­an movies for more than a cen­tu­ry.

“Talk­ing with reg­u­lar folks in In­dia, the on­ly con­nec­tion is crick­et, and though Dwayne Bra­vo, Ke­iron Pol­lard, Nicholas Pooran, and Sunil Nar­ine are house­hold names, they are as­so­ci­at­ed with re­gion­al T20 teams in In­dia, and peo­ple have lit­tle no­tion of a con­crete place called the West In­dies, or for that mat­ter Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Rame­sar said.

“I found the same when I was in South Africa talk­ing with young peo­ple. Bri­an Lara and Us­ain Bolt were sport­ing leg­ends to them, but they couldn’t con­nect them to a tan­gi­ble lo­ca­tion in their minds.”

Rame­sar said, as far as he knows, For­tune For All was the first T&T fea­ture screened at IF­FI GOA since its found­ing in 1952, so au­di­ences were get­ting a win­dow to a lit­er­al­ly un­seen world.

He added, “Co­in­ci­den­tal­ly, I was in Goa in 2015, di­rect­ing a film set in T&T and In­dia. In 2007, my fea­ture, SistaGod, screened at In­dia’s oth­er ma­jor film fes­ti­val, the In­ter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val of Ker­ala (IF­FK), and au­di­ences thought it had been filmed in mul­ti­ple coun­tries; Trinidad, giv­en its cul­tur­al di­ver­si­ty, seemed like many worlds to them. They thought the film’s bud­get had to be sub­stan­tial for us to trav­el to many na­tions to pro­duce it.”

When For­tune For All screened at Le Fes­ti­val In­ter­na­tion­al du Film Pan Africain de Cannes, Rame­sar shared, “A la­dy from East­ern Eu­rope want­ed to see even more of the Trinidad and To­ba­go land­scape, so some­times peo­ple ex­oti­cise or fetishise us based on a lim­it­ed and of­ten stereo­typ­i­cal view.”

As the film is sub­ti­tled in Eng­lish, French, and Span­ish, a lot of the time au­di­ences are pro­cess­ing the di­a­logue in their own writ­ten lan­guage, he said.

“At the Ha­vana Film Fes­ti­val in 2012, for ex­am­ple, au­di­ences ap­pre­ci­at­ed that an­oth­er of my fea­tures, SistaGod, was sub­ti­tled specif­i­cal­ly in Cuban Span­ish,” he added.

“Of­ten for­eign au­di­ences have nev­er heard us speak at length and have no idea how rich and com­plex our lan­guage is. They are al­so sur­prised by our code-switch­ing, de­pend­ing on the cir­cum­stance.

“So the char­ac­ter Michael Cher­rie plays moves from ‘stan­dard’ Eng­lish to the ver­nac­u­lar, which in­cludes a heavy dose of ob­scen­i­ties in both di­rec­tions.

“On an­oth­er note, the film’s score, per­formed by T&T opera singer Na­talia Dop­well, was well re­ceived by Ital­ian au­di­ences in Is­chia and Rome, so a lit­tle fa­mil­iar­i­ty from an un­ex­pect­ed source might bal­ance the nov­el­ty of the rest of the movie.”

Re­ac­tions to the cast have been uni­form­ly pos­i­tive, he said, with the gen­er­al feel­ing that no one is “act­ing” and the per­for­mances are nat­ur­al.

“So I felt that we had as­sem­bled an A-list cast to play the For­tune sib­lings. Re­bec­ca Nedd, play­ing the For­tune ma­tri­arch, was the sole non-ac­tor, and I worked with and filmed her ex­clu­sive­ly on her home soil in To­ba­go, in Buc­coo, Cas­tara, Par­liatu­vi­er, and at Eng­lish­mans Bay. The To­ba­go end of the pro­duc­tion was tricky, as I com­prised the crew, do­ing cam­era, sound, di­rec­tion, etc, on my own. I tend to im­pro­vise a bit, so I’m grate­ful to the cast, es­pe­cial­ly Michael, for putting up with my ec­cen­tric­i­ties over a num­ber of fea­tures now.”

Rame­sar ex­pressed thanks to “all the fes­ti­val se­lec­tions, cities, and au­di­ences that have come out to sup­port. I am al­so thank­ful for our film’s di­rec­tor of pho­tog­ra­phy, Shea, and jour­ney­man cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er, Vishal, for pro­mot­ing the film at an­oth­er Cana­di­an fes­ti­val now in progress.”

More about For­tune For All

For­tune For All has won a num­ber of awards to date.

* Best Trinidad and To­ba­go Film at the Trinidad and To­ba­go Film Fes­ti­val (ttff23); * Best Di­rec­tor at the Por­tu­gal In­de­pen­dent Film Awards in Lis­bon (2023);

* Best Fea­ture Film at the East­ern Eu­ro­pean Film Fes­ti­val in Ro­ma­nia (2023);

* Best Fea­ture Film at the Par­adise Film Fes­ti­val in Hun­gary (2023);

* Best Film at the In­ter­na­tion­al Mo­tion Pic­ture Awards, Toron­to (2024);

* For­tune For All was al­so a fi­nal­ist at fes­ti­vals in France (Cannes), Italy (Rome), Slo­va­kia (Tatras), and Swe­den (Lulea) and was in of­fi­cial se­lec­tion at the Lon­don Di­rec­tor Awards (2024), out of 3,188 films in con­sid­er­a­tion.

For­tune For All (2023) was se­lect­ed for screen­ing in

AFRICA: Cairo, Egypt;

ASIA: Goa, In­dia;

AMER­I­C­AS: Be­lize, George­town, Guyana; Bar­ran­quil­la, Colom­bia; Toron­to, Cana­da; At­lanta, Geor­gia, USA; Harlem & Man­hat­tan, New York, NY, USA; San Diego & San Jose, Cal­i­for­nia, USA;

CARIBBEAN: T&T; Puer­to Ri­co;

EU­ROPE: Brix­ton, Lon­don & Pinewood Stu­dios, Eng­land, UK; Cannes, France; Suresnes, Paris, France; Madrid & Va­len­cia, Spain; Lis­bon, Por­tu­gal; Is­chia & Rome, Italy; Am­s­ter­dam, Hol­land; Luleå, Stock­holm, Swe­den; Bu­dapest, Hun­gary; Tatras, Slo­va­kia; Bucharest, Ro­ma­nia & Craio­va, Jude­tul Dolj, Ro­ma­nia. 

Yao’s achieve­ments

Yao Rame­sar was ho­n­oured as the Caribbean’s first Lau­re­ate in Arts and Let­ters, at the in­au­gur­al AN­SCAFE in 2006, recog­nis­ing that … “Rame­sar’s most sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion is that he has tak­en Caribbean cin­e­ma to the world un­der the rubric of an orig­i­nal aes­thet­ic deemed ‘Caribbe­ing’”.

Al­so in 2006, his ac­claimed Afro­fu­tur­ist fea­ture SISTAGOD, fore­telling the com­ing of a Black woman god, pre­miered at the Toron­to In­ter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val. The year 2009 saw the pub­li­ca­tion of Phe­nom­e­nol­o­gy’s Ma­te­r­i­al Pres­ence (In­tel­lect Books/UK & Chica­go Uni­ver­si­ty Press/US), a book ex­plor­ing Rame­sar’s ear­ly work, with one re­view­er mak­ing the point that “the beau­ti­ful and in­no­v­a­tive video work of Robert Yao Rame­sar can car­ry out phi­los­o­phy.”

In 2014, Rame­sar be­gan the di­rec­tion of an­oth­er fea­ture, SHADE, in South Africa, fea­tur­ing a young Pre­to­ri­an woman from Shosan­guve Town­ship liv­ing with al­binism, whose am­bi­tion is to be an R&B singer.

In 2015, Rame­sar’s HAITI BRIDE be­came the first African di­as­po­ra (and Caribbean) fea­ture film to screen in FES­PA­CO’s main com­pe­ti­tion in Oua­gadougou, Burk­i­na Fa­so, screen­ing the fol­low­ing year at The Ghet­to Bi­en­nale, Port au Prince, Haiti.