JohnnyBulgakov

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.

Emilie Upczak's smart 2017 debut film tells the story of ZhenZhen (Valerie Tian), a Chinese girl who joins her brother Wei (Jay Wong) on the island of Trinidad and Tobago after her father's death. A local gang leader extorts an exorbitant fictive tax to the price of her ticket over and will sell her off if she cannot make up the difference. ZhenZhen ends up having to work as a prostitute, while Wei turns to gambling in order to try and make up her debt. A possible savior arrives in the person of local gallery owner Evelyn (Kandyse McClure). Meanwhile ZhenZhen lands a job working in a local restaurant but it's barely enough to make ends meet, let alone repay her debt. Owner Mrs. Liu (Jacqueline Chan) doubles as an island Madam and soon draws ZenZhen into a seedy world of prostitution-an especially difficult situation for one as sensitive as she. The audience watches distraught as the two siblings descend into an abyss that they seemingly cannot escape. ZhenZhen desperately tries to keep track of all the moving parts of her new existence, but they threaten to overwhelm her. Human trafficking, also known as modern slavery, represents one of the most widespread crimes globally, with over 4.5 million people trafficked yearly in the United States alone (70% of them women) and an estimated yearly profit of over $150 billion worldwide. The film's melancholic pacing and Nancy Schreiber's resourceful cinematography successfully convey the psychological and physical torment that Zhenzhen undergoes-a victim to a cast of unscrupulous characters who consider her nothing better modern-day chattel to be exploited as they please.--Johnny Bulgakov

We are told at the beginning that the text which occasionally appears on screen (the film is silent, minus occasional sound effects) is taken from the diary of Vivian Barrett, one half of a wealthy socialite pair that travels the world with seeming insouciance. Vivian's husband Leo has been injured while piloting a small plane and as a result suffers both physically and psychologically (also losing his hearing, lending logic to the silent film trope). A miracle anti-depressant may save him from a life of constant anxiety, and he is the entrepreneur who lucratively brings it to market. The happy couple starts their travels in Switzerland and Germany, then passes through London, Eastern Europe and North America. Vivian's diary quotes all along from an Indian sage whose book was found in Mexico among her family belongings- silly, almost satirical quotes about life and death and everything in between that seem like parody of Rumi or Khalil Gibran. But all is not as it seems, indeed, in this recreated idyll, and the last few minutes turn our assumptions about the narrator upside down. My Mexican Bretzel's dreamy, languid quality lulls the viewer into a false sense of security- but you'll just have to watch the film yourself to see exactly what I mean. Johnny Bulgakov