Ayiti Mon Amour
This is no ordinary film. Dream-like and beautifully shot in the fishing hamlet of Kabic, director Guetty Felin's magic realist tale of post-earthquake Haiti unfolds delicately, an allegorical love poem to her homeland. Executive produced by Mira Nair, this 2017 release was Haiti's first submission for the foreign language Oscar. Felin tells three overlapping stories with equal skill. Teenaged Orphée (Joakim Cohen) knows that he is different, and he soon discovers a remarkable-and literally shocking-superpower that may put an end to his alienation. In the second tale, an old fisherman Jaures (Jaures Andris) turns to the sea in order to cure his wife Odessa's (Judith Jeudy) illness. She is his entire world, so the stakes couldn't be higher. And finally, in a nod to Borges perhaps, a lazy writer (James Noel) learns the full consequences of his literary torpor as his main character and muse Ama (Anisia Uzeyman) decides to physically escape from the book itself. The film opens with a quote from Aimé Césaire's French-language poem Cahier d'un retour au pays natal which was a literary call-to-arms for his native Martinique to rid itself of the psychological scars of colonial rule. For the US-based Felin the film is a return as well, a poignant look at a country ravished not just by French colonialism, but also by native-born dictators like Papa Doc Duvalier, as well as by the devastating earthquake of 2010. Felin ultimately suggests that like Ama Haiti may also be determined to emerge from a difficult past, ready to write its own story, on its own terms.
