New film for Siemens Heathineers

I was recently hired to edit a short film for Siemens Healthineers about an interesting hospital initiative in South Africa.

Over the past few years, I have collaborated with Siemens Healthineers quite a bit through Prima-Fila Correspondents, the agency I am working with. And I got to discover great projects like this one from Netcare at the Montana Hospital in South Africa.

Desire featured in Variety

It has been months since I last wrote a blog post. Almost a year actually. I had planned on being way more active on this blog but the constant flow of work on my new films Desire and Scars We Carry never let up and months quickly passed by. Since I last wrote a post, I managed to complete the post-production of Scars We Carry and we just wrapped up the production of Desire, my upcoming film on Detroit techno pioneer Carl Craig. I am really happy to share that Variety ran a story on Desire this week. We are now moving on to sound editing, sound mixing and color grading. The film will be ready in a couple of months. And then another adventure will start.

This picture with Carl Craig was taken on the last day of our last shoot in Detroit. We ended up in front of the iconic Michigan Central building, that is one of the symbols of Detroit’s renaissance today. In the past two years, we spent a lot of time trying to capture all the facets of Carl’s beloved Detroit that you can hear in his music: the melancholy, the economic and racial struggles, the resilience, the solidarity, the creativity and the joy. I hope you will be to see, feel and hear all this in Desire.

I am happy to share a few pictures from the shoot. The backstage pictures were taken by the talented Mathilda Schaffter, one of my former students at the Ecole Supérieure du Journalisme (ESJ) in Paris.

This past year, I have also had the privilege to teach the remote master program in documentary filmmaking at the ESJ. My students have produced 17 documentary short films last year, an impressive achievement. I am just amazed by their creativity, resilience and perseverance. And my work with students has become a constant source of inspiration to me.

RIP Wilfredo

The world lost a beautiful and courageous soul yesterday. Wilfredo Macario died of Covid-19 on August 16, 2021, in Quetzaltenango, in Guatemala. In 2013, Wilfredo and his family welcomed me into their home and agreed to share their painful story for my film LA PRENDA (The Pawn). This film premiered at Hot Docs and screened everywhere because their story and their resilience were so powerful and I am forever indebted to them. As a documentary filmmaker, the best result you can achieve is to take good care of the story you have been gifted by courageous people like Astrid, Wilfredo and the entire Macario family. I hope to that day I did it. Let me share this short piece I put together so that hopefully, you can get a glimpse of this man's big heart. RIP Wilfredo.

The lonely fight of Jose and Elvira Pernalete

At the end of a recent screening of my film La Prenda in Caracas, Venezuela, a man came to me to thank me for the film. His eyes full of sadness struck me. He told me that day about his son Juan Pablo, who had been murdered in April of 2017. He gave me his contact information and told me he would like to share his story if I had time. I called him that night told him I would come by the next morning. But my schedule changed that day and what was supposed to be an early interview turned out to be the last thing I did that night.

I arrived really late but Jose and his wife Elvira had patiently waited for me in their half-lit house in Caracas. That night, I stepped into a house out which life had been sucked. Since their only son Juan Pablo has been killed on April 26, 2017 during a rally against the government of Nicolas Maduro, Jose and Elvira have been left behind with their boundless and uncontrollable grief. They are waging a lonely fight for justice. The day we met, the lawyer representing them and other families of young people who have allegedly been killed by the Venezuelan armed forces at rallies in 2017, had himself been killed. They were with another mother, Zulmith, whose only son had also been killed that year. The fought through tears to tell me the story of 20 year-old Juan Pablo, a young basketball star in his country. They showed me his room, his bag full of books he was carrying the day he was killed. They introduced me to the 6 stray dogs and 7 stray cats he had rescued before his death. They told me the story of a young man with a bright future, who lost his life for daring to raise his voice.

Jose and Elvira are now financing their fight for justice with the money they had saved to pay for his studies. You can read their story in Le Matin Dimanche below.

The starving revolution in Venezuela

Supermarkets are empty. Parts of Caracas are in the dark. The brand new currency has no real value because of a rampant inflation. As Nicolas Maduro starts his second term as president today in Venezuela, the situation is dire in the South American country. Read my latest story from Caracas, that ran today in 24 Heures and Tribune de Genève in Switzerland.

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Stray Bullet making headlines in Switzerland

Should a film aim to bypass festivals and be released directly on Netflix? This is the question the major Swiss daily newspaper 24 Heures asked Jean-Cosme Delaloye, the director of STRAY BULLET. His response was unequivocally yes for his latest film. Since STRAY BULLET was released on Netflix, the feedback has been huge. It is incredible to see on Twitter the amount of people the film touched and how far it has traveled in the U.S. One of the main participants of the film has been invited to give talks to college students. People, who had relatives hurt by stray bullets, reached out to us. It has been an unbelievable experience to witness how wide the audience for this film has been. Some films might be more suited for festivals like Jean-Cosme Delaloye’s previous film - LA PRENDA - had been. But the Netflix release has been absolutely fantastic for STRAY BULLET. If you have not watched the film here, you can do so here.

Stray Bullet is now available on Netflix

I write this note from an airport lounge on the way to yet another story of injustice - or justice depending on which angle you look at it. As always when I leave to do a difficult story, I am anxious to get access to it and then to get to the bottom of it. But tonight, more than anything else, I am inspired by what happened since my latest documentary film Stray Bullet launched on Netflix on July 15: https://www.netflix.com/title/80998908

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4 years ago, we set out to tell the story of a young girl - Genesis - who had been hit by a stray bullet in the streets of Paterson. When their daughter passed away, Genesis' parents lost their source of inspiration, love and joy. And then, they lost everything they had built in Paterson. While they were trying to hold on to Genesis' memories, they opened welcomed us into their life. I will always remain deeply grateful for their courage and for their trust.

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Genesis' parents needed to have that faith because they knew we were trying to tell the story of the stray bullet that had killed their daughter. That meant looking at the other side and going into the streets that had been fatal to Genesis. They did not know what would come out of that. Nor did the mothers, the relatives and the friends of the two young men who were accused of killing Genesis. These people showed the same courage when they too decided to share their story with us. We are really grateful to them too.

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Stray Bullet is meant to be the mirror of what is going in the streets and in the courtroom. The film aims to show how the justice system and the community as whole is trying to deal with a stray bullet that killed an innocent 12-year-old girl on July 5, 2014, in Paterson.

In Stray Bullet, there is no hero and no villain. No one is trying to change the world, because everyone is trying to cope with it first. Stray Bullet is a journalistic film more than anything else. We did not try to make art out of the tragic story of Genesis, we just wanted to keep it as raw as possible.  We wanted to show all sides, while making sure no one would be able to reach the closing credits without knowing who Genesis was. 

We would not have been able to do it without the help of the participants in the film. We were able to speak to guys who have had to learn from a young age how to survive in the tough streets of Paterson. Some decided to tell their story methodically. Others like Knowledgeborn decided to "spit" it.  

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Tomorrow, I will be in the middle of Guatemala to cover another story of separation. I will hug the woman who agreed to share it with me and I will thank her, hoping she will be reunited with her children soon. But tonight, I first want to thank the participants of Stray Bullet. And I am thinking of Genesis who would have been 16 this year.

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The tragic story of Alexandre and his family

Last week, I worked on a complicated story about the murder-suicide of the Griffith family in Mapleton, Utah, late last year. This exclusive story raised a lot of questions about what you should reveal as a journalist and what is best kept private. I located the biological father of the alleged murderer, Timothy Griffith, and his ex-wife. The father shared the story of his son and his quest for answers. His son Timothy is accused of shooting and killing his wife Jessica, 16-year-old Samantha, his wife's daughter, and 5 year-old Alexandre, the son he had with Jessica. Timothy is also accused of shooting the family dog before committing suicide.

The Mapleton police department concluded that Jessica planned this murder-suicide with her husband. She thought she was dying from an imaginary cancer and the family's financial situation was dire. The police report was detailed and devastating for both parents, who had fled their financial problems in Switzerland according to people I interviewed for the story. Jessica made several claims to her husband, mother and brother about her childhood, that might help us explain why she was in such distress  in the days leading up to the murder-suicide.  For those who can read French, here is the story that ran last Sunday in Le Matin Dimanche, a major Sunday paper in Switzerland.

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