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Pointe Noire

A rural Cajun community reckons with a 30-year-old double murder. Is this folk justice or a travesty of justice?

Filmmaker and crawfisherman Louis Leger (Roy Dupuis) and criminal defense attorney Dolores Arceneaux (Myriam Cyr) join forces in the Cajun prairie community of Pointe Noire in an effort to save the life of Joel Richard (Michael Bienvenu), a falsely accused man on Louisiana's Death Row. What follows is a search to find out what really happened 30 years ago when two people were killed on the night of the traditional courir de Mardi Gras. Along the way, Louis and Dolores uncover a hauntingly beautiful, isolated community suffering from genetic bottlenecking, secrecy and deceit, yet striving to achieve its own form of folk justice.

  • Pat Mire
    Director
    Dirty Rice; Against the Tide: The Story of the Cajun People of Louisiana; Mon Cher Camarade; Dance for a Chicken: The Cajun Mardi Gras; Sushi & Sauce Piquante: The Life & Music of Gerry McGee; Forever My Love: Music from the Bayou; Swapping Stories: Folktales from Louisiana; Anything I Catch: The Handfishing Story
  • Rebecca Hudsmith
    Writer
  • Pat Mire
    Writer
    Dirty Rice
  • Pat Mire
    Producer
  • Rebecca Hudsmith
    Producer
  • Roy Dupuis
    Key Cast
    "Louis Leger"
    Rumours; Inès; L’Arracheuse de temps; Toute la vie; Brain Freeze; Les fleurs oubliées; Shake Hands with the Devil; The Rocket; Mémoires affectives; Séraphin: Heart of Stone; La Femme Nikita
  • Myriam Cyr
    Key Cast
    "Dolores Arceneaux"
    Kill by Inches; Heist; Species II; Dirty Rice; Franekstein and Me; I Shot Andy Warhol; Savage Hearts; Le secret de Jérôme
  • Michael Bienvenu
    Key Cast
    "Joel Richard"
    Polk County; Love and Hostages
  • Zachary Richard
    Key Cast
    "Nathan Smith"
    Zachary Richard toujours batailleur; Some Day: Live at the Montreal Jazz Festival Zachary Richard; Against the Tide: The Story of the Cajun People of Louisiana
  • Maxime-Claude L'Ecuyer
    Editor
    305 Bellechasse; Squad Leader TD-73028 SoliloquyZsófika; Suki
  • Andrew Morgan Smith
    Composer
    The Old Way; Butchers Book Two: Raghorn; Altered Reality; The Bobcat Boys
  • Jimmy JWJ Ferguson
    Director of Photography
    Torah Tropical; Am I Don Quixote?; Step Back, Doors Closing; Viral; Sushi & Sauce Piquante
  • Andrew DeRitter
    Sound Design
    The Winchesters; Parish
  • Project Type:
    Feature
  • Runtime:
    1 hour 47 minutes 38 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    November 1, 2024
  • Production Budget:
    950,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States, United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States, United States
  • Language:
    English, French
  • Shooting Format:
    ARRI Alexa Mini
  • Aspect Ratio:
    2.39:1
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • 38th Festival international du cinéma francophone en Acadie (FICFA)
    Moncton, New Brunswick
    Canada
    November 23, 2024
    World Premiere
  • 20th Cinema on the Bayou Film Festival
    Lafayette, LA
    United States
    January 29, 2025
    U.S. Premiere
  • Cinema on the Bayou Presents at Robinson Film Center
    Shreveport, LA
    United States
    February 8, 2025
  • New Orleans French Film Festival
    New Orleans, LA
    United States
    March 15, 2025
  • 17th Les Percéides — Festival international de cinéma et d’art de Percé
    Percé, Québec
    Canada
    August 23, 2025
Director Biography - Pat Mire

Pat Mire is an internationally recognized Louisiana filmmaker. Mire’s documentaries on Cajun culture have aired nationally on PBS and other on-line platforms around the world and have won numerous awards in national and international competitions.
 
Mire’s narrative feature film debut, “Dirty Rice,” premiered at the 1997 New Orleans Film Festival and was an official selection at the 1998 London Film Festival. Neil Norman, film critic for the London Evening Standard, reviewed the film and wrote, “[w]hile the Big Easy, No Mercy, and more recently, Eve’s Bayou have flirted with the Cajun world, this is the real deal, 100% proof. This is not to be missed.” Theatrically released on United Artists screens, “Dirty Rice” still has the record for the longest running film to play in a Lafayette, Louisiana movie theater, where it was held over for five straight months.

Mire directed “Against the Tide: The Story of the Cajun People of Louisiana,” which was a November 2000 PBS “Pick of the Week” and was awarded the national “Best Historical Documentary” by PBS.

Clay Fourrier, long-time executive producer of Louisiana Public Broadcasting, recognized that Mire’s work has led to a number of high-profile film projects with LPB that have been aired nationally on PBS and that have garnered “both LPB and Mr. Mire numerous awards, including nationally recognized Telly and NETA awards of excellence.” According to Mr. Fourrier, all of these films highlight “the good things about South Louisiana and the Cajun culture.” Fourrier adds that “in his films, Pat shows the contributions of real people, not Hollywood stereotypes, to our country. This is the underlying theme of all of his work.”

Pat Mire is founder and artistic director of Cinema on the Bayou Film Festival, an international juried film festival in Lafayette, Louisiana.  Founded in 2006, Cinema on the Bayou was born when Hurricane Katrina resulted in the cancellation of the New Orleans Film Festival in the fall of 2005. In the 20 years since, each January, Cinema on the Bayou regularly screens over 150 world, U.S. and Louisiana premieres from around the world, including a large number of French language films.

Pat Mire grew up in a farming community near Eunice, Louisiana on the Cajun prairie. He is an English and French-speaking Cajun committed to correcting stereotypes and misconceptions about his beloved Cajun culture by presenting an insider’s perspective.

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Director Statement

While I have dedicated most of my long filmmaking career to revealing Cajun culture to the world by way of documentary films, I have longed to return to the experience of working with actors, once again, in a narrative setting. During the COVID lockdown, my partner, Rebecca Hudsmith, and I committed to writing a screenplay that combined our two lives and loves -- my Cajun culture and her work as a criminal defense lawyer representing people on Death Row. The result is "Pointe Noire," a story very much based in the realities of both of our worlds.