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For the Haitian-American, West Palm Beach native, Edson Jean, “Ludi” is a personal story. Set in Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood, the compact drama concerns a Haitian immigrant nurse, Ludi (Shein Mompremier), tirelessly working to supply her niece’s American dream. A low-stakes slice of life drama, with a high emotional toll, Jean and co-writer Joshua Jean-Baptiste’s script follows the health care worker for a night as she tries to earn extra money for her family back home.

Continue reading ‘Ludi’: A Modest, But Powerful Critique Of The American Dream [SXSW Review] at The Playlist.

Arriving on the festival circuit just as a group of Ivy League-educated millionaires in Congress punted on raising the minimum wage, Edson Jean’s Ludi is an often riveting work of social realism following its title character, a health care aide played by Shein Mompremier as the chases her American Dream. A Haitian immigrant living in Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood, she engages in spirited debates throughout her daily life, asking her bus driver why he left a dictator in Haiti while embracing Trump’s Maga politics. For Ludi, anything is possible in the US even if she often feels as if she’s working to survive. In one passage we learn her job at a nursing home has taken away her vacation days because she didn’t use them.

Always seeking out overtime and extra shifts, Ludi reluctantly takes her roommate Blanca (Madelin Marchant) up on the offer of a home aide visit,...

“Glocal” is the key word for the Miami Dade College’s Miami Film Festival as the annual event provides a platform for both local and global projects. Of the 93 international submissions to the Oscars, the Florida fest has picked seven films “that moved us and that would speak powerfully to our Miami audience,” says festival executive director Jaie Laplante, who leads a selection committee alongside programming co-director, Lauren Cohen.

“We’ve always thought it important to look out for films by female directors but it wasn’t at all difficult this year,” says Cohen about the festival’s lineup, which includes nearly 100 shorts and features from some 40 countries.

This year’s 38th edition, which takes place March 5-14, and for the first time in its history, runs before the Oscars, includes international film shortlisted contenders “La Llorona,” “Sun Children,” “Quo Vadis, Aida?,” “Charlatan,” “The Mole Agent” and “Night of the Kings.

Complex Networks has picked up its first scripted series. The media company has inked a deal with Adaptive Studios to distribute Grown, which won Adaptive and Project Greenlight Digital Studios' Get The Greenlight contest two years ago.

Grown, which comes from Haitian-American filmmakers Joshua Jean-Baptiste and Edson Jean, will tell the story of two cousins looking to make the most of their lives in Miami. When Jean-Baptiste and Jean were announced as the Get The Greenlight winners back in January 2016, their project was known as #Josh. Now, two years later, it has a new name and a new distributor.

“Through our projects, we work to enhance Miami’s cultural relevance and seek to color the multi-media canvas with the rich, yet complex, characteristics of the Haitian American culture,” Jean-Baptiste and Jean said in a press release.

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