The history of Caribbean cinema now moves into the 2000s and 2010s. After seven installments and several decades of filmmaking, this eighth installment brings together three films from Guadeloupe and the Dominican Republic, each exploring individual journeys that serve as gateways to broader social realities.
*Nèg Maron* explores the lives of urban youth in Guadeloupe. *La Hija Natural* follows a young woman who sets out to find her father in the Dominican Republic. *Le Bonheur d’Elza* also tells the story of a family quest that takes its main character all the way to Guadeloupe. You are now on the eighth episode out of ten. The first seven are already available on Richès Karayib. After this one, there will be two more episodes to explore the most contemporary Caribbean cinema.
2005: GUADELOUPE - *NÈG MARON*, BY JEAN-CLAUDE BARNY
Nèg Maron is the film of a generation. Starring two Guadeloupean dancehall stars, Daly and Admiral T, who play the lead roles of Silex and Josua, alongside Pedro (Stomy Bugsy), it marked a turning point in Caribbean cinema in the early 2000s. Similarly, Tèt grenné by Christian Grandman (2001), it focuses on contemporary urban space in a film industry that is still largely rural (unlike Jamaican cinema, which has been set in the city from its very beginnings) with an aesthetic inspired by music videos (shoulder-mounted camera, sharp movements, rapid cuts, and jump cuts) set to hip-hop and rap beats: a new generation of filmmakers is emerging.
We follow a group of idle youths in the “ghetto,” caught up in petty theft and cannabis use, whose codes—gestures, expressions, clothing, and references—are perfectly mastered and create a powerful mirror effect among young viewers.
The Creole mother (a single mother raising her children) remains steadfast in her role, brilliantly portrayed here by Jocelyne Béroard (of the group Kassav’) in scenes that have gone down in the annals of this cinema. As for the Creole language, it is vibrant and prominently featured, following a decade during which it had waned (perhaps in an effort to reach a broader audience beyond the Caribbean and Guyana), and the film is also characterized by a musical score that is fully in tune with its time.
Political awareness is not left out: one of the very rare physical confrontations between a Black character and a Beké character (descendant of a slave-owning family) opens the film and sets the tone against a backdrop of disputes linked to the colonial past, while the film’s title refers to the Maroon movement. It is as if the injustice of the economic system—based on a “racialized” social hierarchy—highlights elements of continuity with the Caribbean’s past.
Blending references to the past with early 21st-century cultural codes, this film broke all box office records in Guadeloupe and, backed by a strong distribution network in mainland France, made an unexpected breakthrough in several French cities, particularly in the Île-de-France region. Following the undeniable success of *Rue Cases-Nègres* (Euzhan Palcy, 1983), Caribbean cinema once again demonstrated its potential on a national level.
2011: DOMINICAN REPUBLIC — *La Hija Natural* (*The Natural Daughter*), by Leticia Tonos
Although its film output is modest, the Dominican Republic boasts a steady stream of filmmaking that is full of little surprises. *La Hija natural* follows the journey of a young woman who, after the death of her mother—whose house was struck by a bus (which is not the only “whim” in the film’s screenplay)—sets out to meet her father, whom she has never known.
He agrees to take her in despite the fears that this unknown girl’s arrival stirs up in him. Not surprisingly, various events will bring them closer together. However, while the plot may seem commonplace, it is firmly rooted in Caribbean reality. First of all, the absence of acknowledged paternity—sometimes without official recognition of the children—is a reality that strongly shapes certain Caribbean societies: even today, more than one in two families in the French West Indies are single-parent households.
A related phenomenon is the risk of falling in love with an unidentified half-sister or half-brother—a dramatic device used to great effect in this film. Furthermore, the characters dream of the dead and check to see if their ghosts are in the garden (in all the obviousness of the “magical” everyday life of magical realism found in both Haitian and Latin American literature) by sticking a machete into the ground to see which way it tilts.
Following a Voodoo ritual, a mesmerizing nighttime sequence in a banana plantation shows the young protagonist possessed by the spirit of her father’s late wife, with the past and present blending seamlessly (a secondary character in his sixties is then transported back to childhood), without this shocking anyone. Furthermore, while remaining discreet, this film highlights the “racialized” social hierarchy deeply rooted in the Caribbean as a result of its colonial past: the father has white skin while his daughter is mixed-race—which may explain the lack of official recognition from this prominent figure—and his handyman is Black.
In a scene that seems harmless at first glance, it is indeed the Black man who must take a basket of eggs—which are clearly rotten—to the landfill on the other side of town, while the residents—mostly white and mixed-race—go about their business, attending Mass or shopping. The most recent *Sugar Island* (Johanne Gomez Terrero, 2024), which has garnered international acclaim, revisits some of the themes from *La Hija natural*, ranging from voodoo to early motherhood, but this time set in an Afro-Caribbean community.
2011: GUADELOUPE — ELZA’S HAPPINESS, BY MARIETTE MONPIERRE
There are very few female directors of feature-length fiction films in Caribbean cinema. The most famous is Euzhan Palcy from Martinique, known for the must-see film *Rue Cases-Nègres* (1983), which earned her numerous awards and an international career. However, it is important to note that the very first Caribbean woman to direct a feature film was Sarah Maldoror from Guadeloupe, with *Sambizanga* (1972), a film dealing with Angola’s national liberation movement, which is considered a classic of African cinema.
As such, the film underwent restoration carried out by theAfrican Film Heritage Project of the Film Foundation founded by American director Martin Scorsese in 2021. Furthermore, with this film, Sarah Maldoror officially became one of the first French female directors, following in the footsteps of Alice Guy, Musidora, Germaine Dulac, and Agnès Varda. With *Le Bonheur d’Elza* (2011), Mariette Monpierre, a native of Guadeloupe with an international career (particularly in the United States), became the third woman from the Caribbean to direct a feature film; after screening at festivals in New York, the film was honored with the New York Times’ “Critics’ Choice” award.
This film follows the journey of a young woman who, with great determination and against her own mother’s wishes, decides to return to Guadeloupe to meet her father, whom she has never known. Furthermore, at one point, Elza (Stana Roumillac) is the victim of an attempted rape in a shower. With the increased prominence of female characters in certain recent films, the fragility of their situation is more directly highlighted in the midst of their daily lives, thereby challenging the image of the unflappable, resilient Caribbean woman (the “woman who stands tall”).
With *Elza’s Happiness*, Mariette Monpierre asserts women’s right to be vulnerable as well as to have sexual desires—something that cinema had “forbidden” her until then. This film is part of a movement in Caribbean cinema that began in 2010 and, with films such as *Retour au Pays* (Julien Dalle, 2010), allows characters—whose psychology is now more deeply explored—to be individuals, in contrast to the first thirty years of this cinema, characterized by figures who shaped the destiny of the collective (the neighborhood, culture, identity). The female characters in this cinema play a full part in this development.
About the Author
Guillaume Robillard holds a Ph.D. in film studies; he is a professor and researcher, a documentary filmmaker, and a specialist in Caribbean cinema and artistic production. He is the author of two books: *Conquest of Space and Time: Caribbean Cinema (Éditions Jannink, “Hypothèses d’Art,” 2023) and Decolonial Cinema: Characters in Caribbean Cinema (Presses Universitaires des Antilles, “Arts et Esthétique,” 2024).
