Marq Rodriguez packed 1,500 grocery bags to buy his first movie camera.

It opened a world of opportunity for the 18-year-old.

His short film, The Last I Heard Your Voice, screens as part of the Bermuda International Film Festival this month.

“The story is about a boy who obsessively listens to a voicemail left by his late mother,” said Mr Rodriguez. “I have a deep interest in psychology.”

The four-minute film took him three weeks to make. Kade Stallard played the main character, and his 14-year-old brother Brian helped with the lighting.

The Berkeley Institute graduate will study filmmaking at Whistling Woods International Institute in Mumbai, India this summer. He also wants to study marketing and psychology in the United Kingdom.

“I would like to use my talents to change the world,” he said. “I want to start a global foundation that helps impoverished people and people under dictatorships find their voice.”

He was born in the Dominican Republic to a Bermudian father and a Dominican mother. The family moved to Bermuda when he was four years old. As a youngster his multiculturalism made him so shy he turned to art to communicate.

“Art gave me my freedom of expression and I want to give that to others,” he said. “I want to use all of my interests, art, music, film, drama to do that.”

He became interested in film in a roundabout way.

“When I was a kid, I was watching a television cartoon and they did a segment on flip books and animation,” he said.

He found a pad of paper and began experimenting.

“I began working on my art to improve my detail,” he said. “I couldn’t draw without listening to music, so I got into music. I would get images in my mind from listening to music that I couldn’t transcribe into animation or art.”

This led him to film.

He got one of his first breaks last year when he directed and produced commercials for Global Arts Entertainment (Youth Initiatives) Foundation.

“They wanted a young person,” he said. “Sarah Fellows said I had an eye for filmmaking. I was 17.”

The teenager then went with Global Arts to a United Nations youth conference in New York, to show one of his films.

“It was the first time a Bermudian had entered a film in the conference’s 13-year history,” he said.

Drowning, his film about obsessive compulsive disorder, placed second in a Bermuda National Gallery youth competition.

He also fared well in a Bermuda Society of Arts competition last year. He was pleased to be beaten by professional photographer Antoine Hunt.

“His film was really amazing,” said Mr Rodriguez. “I really admire his work.”

He is currently in New York again with Global Arts as a junior chaperone. He’ll also document the students’ experience.

The Last I Heard Your Voice will open BIFF on March 20 at 6pm in the Onion Patch segment. The festival runs until March 26 at Liberty Theatre.

For tickets and information see www.biff.bm.