By Ben Dupuy and Kim Ives | 77 mins | 1983 | Haiti

Filmed clandestinely under the Duvalier dictatorship, Bitter Cane, presented at THFF25 in a brand new restoration, is an incisive documentary interrogation of the exploitation and domination of the Haitian people. From peasant coffee farms in the rugged tropical mountains to steamy foreign-owned sweatshops in the capital, Port-au-Prince, the film takes the viewer on a journey through Haitian history to a deeper grasp of the country’s political economy today. The film explores the Haiti of the 1980s, a perspective that helps the viewer to better understand the crises that wrack the country now. Bitter Cane shows how foreign capitalists were beginning to drive peasants off the land and into the cities, creating giant shanty towns which have spawned crime, dislocation, and anarchy. Today, 40 years later, we are seeing the culmination of this socio-economic upheaval, which has left the country facing its third foreign military occupation in three decades.