Run from Rain

In a time when freedom is under attack and conflict is rising both in the United States and around the world, I directed the film ‘Run from Rain’ not only to focus on Haitian armed groups displacing more than 1 million people, but because I believe deeply that the story of displacement due to corrupt governance and power grabs by the few, as seen through the eyes of the next generation, is so vital to continuing democracy worldwide. Haiti was the first black republic in the world. Its freedom paved the way for so many countries to fight and find their own freedom. Its voice now is a powerful reminder of the power an individual can harbor, the potential we all carry to heal from trauma dealt by forces bigger than ourselves and envision a new future. At a time when USAID and other international development programs, as well as the Department of Education, are under attack by the second administration of Trump, it’s important to continue to support safe education spaces in our country as well as abroad. For so many it provides stability, food security, encourages critical thinking, and fosters community.

I moved to Haiti in 2016 when I was 23-years-old and lived the first three years of my life in Haiti in Mirebalais, a small town in the Central Plateau department of the country, near the border of the Dominican Republic. I spent my days hiking to 40 remote mountain villages to tell stories of those communities, learning to speak fluent Haitian Creole. Later I moved to the Haitian Capital of Port-au-Prince working as an investigative journalist and documentary filmmaking, breaking investigative narratives of children recruited into armed groups and women used as weapons of war on the frontlines of the gang wars. I witnessed the country descend into violence and covered the political unrest, president Jovenel Moïse’s assassination and displacement of thousands of Haitians. This past year more than 1 million were displaced from their homes due to the armed groups that have since taken control of nearly 80 percent of the Haitian capital and are spreading across the country. Now more than 47 percent of its 11.7 million population are in need of assistance. I watched as so much of the media in Haiti covered the breaking news, another cycle came and went but I felt I wasn’t hearing from the people I spoke to everyday. I wanted to get to the heart of what was going on in the country and hear from those trying to survive it and change its course for themselves, their community and ultimately Haiti’s story. Since the filming of this story, Mirebalais has been under attack and Macul is once again at the precipice of having to leave the schools and home he has remade in the Central Plateau.

Because of the relationships I had built with an education nonprofit, Summits Education, during my time in the Central Plateau, I was provided access to continue my coverage of the issue around displacement and its consequences not just nationally in Haiti, but globally in countries like the United States. I hope that with ‘Run from Rain’ we are transported to the grey of so much of the endemic violence an absent state has created, and how continued trauma can be processed and used to jumpstart the peacebuilding required collectively, that starts with an individual like Macul.