Haiti: Critically-Acclaimed Meditative Drama "Jean Gentil" Premieres In New York This Weekend

I must say I love the look and sounds of what I see and hear in the trailers below. 

The images are engaging. It looks like it'll likely be a quiet, meditative, instructive piece of cinema.

Obviously, I'm curious, and my curiousty will be satisfied when it'll screen this weekend here in New York - a screening I plan to attend. A FREE public screening by the way.

I profiled it many months ago, when it was scheduled to screen at the San Francisco International Film Festival. To recap...

Titled Jean Gentil... "Gentil" being French for noble or courteous; or, in Spanish, it means kind or nice. The film, which has played to lots of critical acclaim at a number of international film festivals since last year, centers on Jean, a Haitian professor living in neighboring Dominican Republic (Santo Domingo specifically), who falls on hard times when he loses his job, and then his material belongings, starting with his apartment.

He sets out on a journey back home to Haiti, searching not only for a place to live, but also peace of mind, as his will is tested, and he undergoes a change from "sophisticated" multilingual professor, to solitary being, embroiled in a complex interrelationship with nature and his surroundings.

What's that saying... it's only when you've lost everything that you're free to do/be anything.

The film was produced by Spaniard husband and wife team Israel Cárdenas and Laura Amelia Guzmán, their second feature film.

It'll screen at the Haiti Film Fest this Sunday, November 20th, at 6:30pm, in the Spike Lee screening room at Long Island University in Brooklyn. Again, it's FREE! So, if you're available, and interested, go see it! 

Watch the two trailers below. 

The first one isn't subtitled in English, but it contains more footage than the English-subtitled trailer that follows underneath it.