For the first time, a Trinidad and Tobago film is about to hit over 250 theaters across the USA. Bazodee, the Caribbean musical starring dynamic soca star Machel Montano boasts a stellar soundtrack and quality cinematography, capturing stunning images of the T&T landscape and culture. CEO of Serafini Pictures and producer of Bazodee, Susanne Bohnet, who visited CreativeTT’s offices on Tuesday for a meeting is visibly proud of the film and has a passion for Trinbagonian culture and people despite her German roots. She professes to having a love affair with the twin-island for more than 20 years.
Bohnet first saw the movie in its original form at the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival last year when she completely fell in love with it. “I’ll make this movie much bigger if you just give me a chance,” she said to Machel and his team. She re-shot some scenes to strengthen the storyline and increase character depth to ensure that it was marketable to a world audience, one where “somebody in India, somebody in the UK, somebody in Sweden who’s never been to Trinidad will see the movie and feel like this story relates to me,” she confidently stated.
If you are even just a little bit active on social media, you would know that the movie is gaining more and more popularity every day. Once the official trailer for the movie was launched online on June 16th, it performed very well, gaining over 700,000 hits on Facebook. Bohnet and her team are very enthusiastic about Bazodee’s U.S. release as the movie is already being praised for its soundtrack which features YouTube star Lily Singh (Superwoman), Major Lazer and of course, leading man Machel Montano.
Heavy marketing of the movie continues. The Today Show, Rolling Stones and HBO are just some of the programs and companies that want to feature Machel and the team. Susanne believes that T&T has a rich, beautiful culture that deserves more recognition. She is already seeing this come to fruition as people who are not familiar with Trinbagonian culture have told her that they now cannot stop listening to soca because of the soundtrack.
Elizabeth “Lady” Montano (Machel’s mother), who was also present at the meeting, stressed that “This is a film of Trinidad and Tobago…….and whenever Machel does anything, he does it for Trinidad and Tobago.”
Bazodee premieres on August 5th in U.S. theaters. Release dates for the Caribbean, Canada and the UK will be announced soon.