YOCHI

category: caribbean, environmental, narratives, short films

YOCHI

Yochi, a 9-year-old selectively mute Mayan boy, guards a nest of endangered Yellow-Headed Parrots in Belize's pine savannah. When his beloved older brother, Itza, returns from the city, Yochi learns that he’s in debt and has turned to poaching – setting the brothers on a collision course.

directed by ILANA LAPID
Ilana Lapid, is a filmmaker and educator interested in telling visual stories that put a human face on global conflicts. She was born in NYC and grew up in Jerusalem, Ottawa and Las Cruces, NM. She holds a BA from Yale and MFA from the University of Southern California in Film Production. Lapid is an Assistant Professor at the Creative Media Institute of New Mexico State University, where she teaches directing, screenwriting and border cinema. Lapid received a Fulbright in Romania to work with visual stories of Roma (Gypsy) children, and was an Artist in Residence at Slifka Center at Yale.

She has directed multiple short films that won awards at international festivals, including Red Mesa, which won Best Short at the LA Latino International Film Festival. Her short La Catrina is a selection of the 2016 Women in Film and Television International Showcase, and the binational 2016 Femme Frontera Filmmaker Showcase.

In 2013 and 2014 Lapid led a documentary filmmaking course in the jungle in Belize, which inspired her to write and direct Yochi. She is now working with Wildlife Conservation Society, other international NGOs, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service, to use Yochi for conservation education across the Caribbean. Lapid is currently working on a feature film based on Yochi, dealing with the illegal wildlife trade in Chiquibul jungle in Belize, bordering Guatemala.

BELIZE || 2016 || 46 MINS