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 [...]

By: Ben Dupuy, Kim Ives Country: Haiti Language: Kreyòl, French, and English, w/English subtitles Duration: 77 mins Year: 1983 Genre: Non-Fiction SYNOPSIS 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 [...]

By: Yoel Morales Country: Dominican Republic Language: Spanish w/English Subs Duration: 80 mins Year: 2024 Genre: Fiction SYNOPSIS A raw vision of love in a hostile Caribbean city, Bionico’s Bachata is a mockumentary that follows a hopeless romantic, addicted to crack, who must take control of his life if he wants to marry the [...]

PROGRAM DESCRIPTION Ancestral echoes reverberate across the films in this programme, embodying various forms of resistance and resilience, from the Florida Everglades to a Jamaican sugar plantation to the Amazon rainforest. A Q&A with filmmakers whose work appears in this program will follow the screening. REDEMPTON (AN EXPERIENCE IN THREE PARTS) By Mariana [...]

By: Johanné Gómez Terrero Country: Dominican Republic, Canary Islands Language: Spanish w/English Subs Duration: 90 mins Year: 2024 Genre: Fiction SYNOPSIS Makenya leaves behind fun and dancing with her friends in search for work, after an unwanted pregnancy confronts her with sudden adulthood. The teenager lives alongside her grandfather and mother in the Batey, [...]

How can cinema serve as an act of healing, and/or reckon with the consequences of violence? This panel explores the ways filmmakers engage with the long-term psychological effects of colonialism, state violence, and personal loss. Rather than focusing on direct representations of violence, films like Kouté vwa, True Chronicle of the Blida Joinville Psychiatric [...]

PROGRAM DESCRIPTION Employing a variety of cinematic forms and strategies, the five films in this programme engender lingering, often poetic diasporic dialogues—between here and there, then and now. BISAGRAS By Luis Arias | 16 mins | 2024 | Senegal, Brazil, USA "Bisagras" is a film exploring the enduring here and elsewhere of black [...]

By Med Hondo | 116 mins | 1979 | Mauritania, Algeria, France Mauritanian French director Med Hondo’s West Indies: The Fugitive Slaves of Liberty, presented at THFF25 in a new restoration,  proved a watershed event for African cinema—the continent’s first musical as well as a sui generis amalgam of historical epic, Broadway revue, Brechtian [...]

By: Med Hondo Country: Mauritania, Algeria, France Language: French w/English Subs Duration: 116 mins Year: 1979 Genre: Fiction SYNOPSIS Mauritanian French director Med Hondo’s West Indies: The Fugitive Slaves of Liberty, presented at THFF25 in a new restoration,  proved a watershed event for African cinema—the continent’s first musical as well as a sui generis [...]