Jean Gentil
(Jean Gentil)

« I’m alive, but not living. » The man who is walking on the hillside at night is wearing a shirt with buttons and a pen slipped into his pocket. The « teacher » Jean Gentil Remy is an accountant but he wanders around St. Domingo looking for a job. Thrown out of his room, he goes to sleep on a construction site and why not work there too. But little by little this model Christian looses all hope sinking deeper and deeper into the island, into the rainforest, as to vanish far from the urban landscape that has finally rejected him. Originally from Haiti, the other side of the island, he is clearly trying to return home. Shot on 35-millimeter film, this portrait of a frail but graceful man is breathtaking. The journey taken at first in search of a better life, soon sees how nature takes in, as if instinctively, the man who did everything to learn and work was brought back to an original state, attracted by the elemental forces of things. CG