Murder in Pacot

Murder in Pacot (2014)

Meurtre à Pacot

In the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake, a middle-aged Port-au-Prince couple come face to face with the stark contradictions of Haitian society when they are forced to rent out their villa to a foreign aid worker and his enterprising local girlfriend.

Date of release
2014-09-05
TMDB
3.9 / 10 (9)
Runtime
2h 10m
Genres
Drama
Director
Raoul Peck

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: Port-au-Prince

Murder in Pacot is a feature film by Haitian film director Raoul Peck. The film stars Joy Olasunmibo Ogunmakin, Alex Descas, Thibault Vinçon, and Lovely Kermonde Fifi and is a continuation of the theme Peck featured in his last documentary, Assistance Mortelle, on international aid to Haiti following the earthquake of 12 January 2010 which opened at New York's Film Society of Lincoln Center in February 2014. The lead producers of the joint Haitian, French and Norwegian production were Peck and Remi Grellety.

Production

Peck stated that he wanted to approach the serious consequences of the disaster in another way than the usual images of slums and homeless camps. He was struck by seeing the collapsed homes of the prosperous class, the amazing visual of wealth in ruins.

Visually it was incredible, this image of wealth, totally crumbled. That story didn't interest many people, because you could do better images in the slums, in the camps, in downtown Port-au-Prince. (Visuellement, c’était incroyable, cette image de la richesse en ruines. Cette histoire n’a pas intéressé beaucoup de gens parce qu’il était possible de faire de meilleures images dans les bidonvilles, les camps et le centre-ville de Port-au-Prince.)

The film production was supported by the French TV channel Arte, the World Cinema Support (Aide aux cinémas du monde), SØRFOND (Norwegian South Film Fund), the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie and the European Union.

In early March the casting started and young Haitian women and men between 18–27 years were invited to apply to participate in trials in order to obtain one of the main roles in the film. Lovely Kermonde Fifi, a young debutant actress and poet, was the successful contender to play beside French actors Alex Descas and Thibault Vinçon and the German-Nigerian Joy Olasunmibo Ogunmakin, a singer-songwriter who performs under the name Ayọ, also appeari…

According to Raoul Peck the script was written by 'three hands'. Haitian novelist and poet Lyonel Trouillot and French screenwriter Pascal Bonitzer offered to collaborate with Peck to work on the script.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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