From Enclosure to (Re)Grounding: The Reversibility of Colonial Debt Structures in Contemporary Cinema—
Freda (Caroline Monnet, 2021) and Bootlegger (Gessica Généus, 2021)

CSWS research grant fellow Sarah Agou, PhD candidate in Romance languages, discusses two Haitian films that center their plots on a young female student protagonist and their role in rebuilding their community by reversing the ingrained commonplace of colonial legacies, imperial debts, and historical misrepresentations. Freda is considered the first feature-length film in Haitian Creole, while Bootlegger has the same status for Anishinaabemowin. Reversal becomes a tool to break circles of oppression, coloniality, and silencing, and opens a space for what Leanne Betasamosake Simpson calls “grounded normativity.”