This Labor Day Weekend, culture, creativity, and community collide in the 2026 Urban Film Festival, held in Overtown and Downtown Miami. UFF, one of the largest free film festivals in the US, is built on the pillars of education, exposure and distribution opportunities for new filmmakers to share the stories of their communities.
This year’s festival will feature a film by Saahas Gorla, a 9-year-old student, author, and filmmaker from Miami. He is also the creator of Voices of Miami, a youth-led initiative dedicated to preserving the histories of the communities that have shaped South Florida.
Gorla’s film, entitled Voices of Miami: One Grove, is a short, child-led documentary uncovering the frequently overlooked history of Bahamian settlers in Coconut Grove. Stories of resilience, segregation, and community take the forefront as the landscape of the neighborhood continues to be reshaped by development.
Saahas Gorla encounters Coconut Grove’s historic segregation wall for the first time while filming Voices of Miami: One Grove.
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Through conversations with neighbors, community leaders and elders — along with visits to local museums and cultural festivals — Gorla explored the history of the Bahamian pioneers whose migration built the community. Filmed primarily on an iPhone and a Sony digital camera, the film was created to inspire other young people to ask questions and connect with their communities.
“I made this documentary because of the history,” said Gorla. “The Bahamians came here, and they built this beautiful area. It’s kind of sad that you don’t know the first people to come to your own neighborhood.”
For Gorla, his favorite parts of Coconut Grove are its architecture, nature and beauty.
Above-ground burial vaults at Charlotte Jane Memorial Park Cemetery, a historic Bahamian cemetery in Coconut Grove.
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“The pathway that led from the white part of Coconut Grove to the Black part of Coconut Grove also struck my curiosity,” said Gorla. “These small houses are going down, and big buildings are coming up. If we don’t preserve [history], it may disappear.”
Executive producer of the Florida Film House and UFF founder Marco Mall is a South Florida native who started the festival in 2015. His vision was to fill a need in the community to empower the next generation of film and media creators.
Through Florida Film House’s 1st Take Youth Program, Mall offers youth ages 12 through 18 an introduction to filmmaking, fostering creativity, teamwork and technical skills. Gorla, however, was too young to be a part of the program. Mall first discovered him through his submission to the film festival.
“We don’t look at their age; we look at their films,” said Mall. “It’s not like I knew [Gorla] was 9 when I looked at the film.”
Saahas and Savir with Carolyn Donaldson (left), Dorothy Wallace (middle), Sister Loretta Whittle (right) at Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church.
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“We get a lot of submissions,” continued Mall. “He cut through all the submissions and got accepted… This year, I was able to do 200 films, but we had close to 500 submissions.”
UFF aims to highlight the Florida Film House’s commitment to empowering underserved filmmakers, regardless of background or socioeconomic status.
“A lot of people see ‘Urban Film Festival’ and they think of it as a Black film festival,” said Mall. “Right now, we are heavily Black, but we’re also heavily Latin, heavily Brazilian. We get a lot of international content as well… the Urban Film Festival is an open celebration of different ethnicities.”
In focusing on community-driven projects, the Urban Film Festival aims to contribute to the cultural and economic growth of local neighborhoods. One way in which Mall seeks to do this is by hosting the festival in Overtown, a neighborhood that has been significant in the cultural and historical development of Miami.
“There are a lot of new people that come to Overtown for our festival that have never been to Overtown and wouldn’t have come to Overtown,” said Mall. “I get so many people that ask me in a negative tone why [I’m] doing it in Overtown. It’s the coolest place in South Florida! It’s the best place to do it. It doesn’t get more urban and more artsy and more real than Overtown.”
Saahas records narration for his documentary, One Grove.
(Avneet Vig)
Through Voices of Miami, Gorla hopes to continue exploring the diverse communities of South Florida — from Jamaican to Garifuna to Haitian cultures, inspiring other young people to ask questions and connect with their communities.
“I learned that it [filmmaking] takes practice,” said Gorla. “It was very hard to get it right. I had to research a lot. I love how you can take all the pictures and videos, and then you piece it together into one documentary.”
For Mall, much of the success of young filmmakers comes from the support they receive. He commends the support structure behind Gorla and hopes to continue to use UFF to reach wide audiences and make a lasting impact on the community.
“I’m really proud of the work we’ve done with both our youth program, 1st Take, and with the Urban Film Festival,” said Mall. “I think we’ve done phenomenal work, and I think we, in our little way, made the world a better place.”