Overview:
With AbiZe, Haitian filmmaker Luc Junior Ségur transforms heartbreak into a robust quick movie that blends silence, grief and resilience. Via this transferring love story, AbiZe offers life to silence, regrets and tender gestures that linger after a relationship ends—whereas honoring the great thing about what as soon as was. Shot amid Haiti’s turmoil, the movie has earned two nominations on the Toronto Worldwide Nollywood Movie Pageant.
PORT-AU-PRINCE –“AbiZe,” a Haitian quick movie by director Luc Junior Ségur, created from deep private heartbreak and shot in opposition to the backdrop of Haiti’s instability, is now a finalist on the Toronto Worldwide Nollywood Movie Pageant (TINFF), incomes nominations for Finest Director – Worldwide Brief Movie and Finest French Movie.
“AbiZe saved me, ” Ségur shared. “AbiZe is greater than a movie; it’s a bit of my soul.”
In late September, Haitian audiences will lastly uncover “AbiZe,” the 17-minute quick movie that took greater than two years to finish, from late 2023 to early 2025, as political turmoil and violence repeatedly stalled manufacturing.
Regardless of these challenges, “AbiZe” has stood out on the competition circuit for its emotional honesty and restrained storytelling. Critics say the nominations spotlight not solely Ségur’s artistic power but in addition the common resonance of a deeply private story rooted in loss and silence.
On the coronary heart of “AbiZe” lies an actual wound. Impressed by a sudden and painful breakup that shattered the director’s personal life, the movie transforms the silence left by that absence into cinema.
“The ache was so intense that at one level, I actually felt like I used to be dropping myself without end. However as a substitute of collapsing, I selected to create. Making this movie grew to become my means out. In some ways, it saved me. It gave me a language to precise what I couldn’t clarify — a option to survive one thing that felt mindless”
Luc Junior Ségur, Haitian filmmaker.
It portrays grief not via dialogue however via the burden of what can’t be stated: buried feelings, solitude, introspection and the gradual strategy of therapeutic. For Ségur, silence was not an finish, however a starting — the place to begin for a movie that looks like a muted scream, a shattered mirror, and a deeply intimate fact made common.
“The ache was so intense that, at one level, I actually felt like I used to be dropping myself without end. However as a substitute of collapsing, I selected to create,” Ségur stated.
“Making this movie grew to become my means out. In some ways, it saved me. It gave me a language to precise what I couldn’t clarify — a option to survive one thing that felt mindless.”
Self-produced, the movie resists simple narrative formulation. It opts as a substitute for restraint, ambiguity and uncooked emotional resonance.
“As a director, I’ve at all times been drawn to emotional fact. I imagine in cinema that resonates, not solely visually but in addition deeply, humanly.”
AbiZe: A fracture on the middle
The title itself carries a double edge. The phrase ‘BiZe’ is a fusion of each the principle characters’ names. In Haitian Creole, “AbiZe” is a phrase which means “to betray or abuse somebody’s belief.” That layered which means runs via the story, the place intimacy, silence, and betrayal intersect.
The movie follows Ze, a younger man disillusioned with love, persuaded by a good friend to strive once more with Abi, a colleague. As their bond deepens, Abi fully captivates Ze, turning him right into a hopeless romantic. What begins as tender renewal unravels right into a relationship strained by an invisible crack—a symbolic fracture that grows till love itself collapses.
Clorette Jacinthe, actress and co-founder of the Brigade d’Intervention Théâtrale d’Haïti (BIT-Haïti), performs Abi alongside Edmond Erthon, identified for “Kidnapping Inc.” and the Festival Quatre Chemins, who portrays Ze. Collectively, they create to life this love story as fragile as it’s intense.
“When Luc advised me in regards to the challenge and gave me the script, I instantly stated sure, as a result of I might already see myself in that character,” Jacinthe stated. “We labored actually laborious to get up to now, and I hope the movie makes its means and wins some awards.”
“AbiZe is greater than a movie: it’s a bit of my soul. As a director, I’ve at all times been drawn to emotional fact. I imagine in cinema that resonates, not solely visually but in addition deeply, humanly”
Luc Ségur, Haitian filmmaker
AbiZe is a narrative that invitations the viewers into an immersion into emotional chaos — a sensory journey via grief and its disorientations. Its recognition at TINFF indicators each the universality of its themes and the rising visibility of Haitian unbiased cinema.
“Sure, AbiZe could appear unfinished, mysterious — even misunderstood. However that’s precisely how I lived the story,” Ségur confesses.
“I by no means actually understood why it ended. I had no solutions — solely indicators, silence and an unsolvable equation. I attempted to translate that into a movie that doesn’t search to clarify, however to make individuals really feel.”
The attention of a delicate artist
Skilled on the Ciné Institute in Haiti’s southeast coastal metropolis, Jacmel, Ségur has labored throughout images, movie, and humanitarian documentation. In 2024, he received the World Humanitarian Day photograph contest for his skill to seize uncooked emotion in a single picture. His collaborations with the World Meals Programme (WFP) have taken him into colleges, rural areas and displaced camps, experiences that sharpen his deal with the unstated struggles of Haitian life.
His credit embrace work on movies comparable to Kafou and Kidnapping Inc., institutional documentaries, promoting campaigns and music movies like ‘Madanm mwen ansent’ by Roodyman, which has surpassed a million views, and “Chalè – 2 Chay”, amongst others. Whether or not business or inventive, his work is sure by a deep sensitivity to human emotion. With AbiZe, that sensitivity turns inward.
“If even one individual watches this movie and feels rather less alone, then I’ll have achieved one thing significant and true,” Ségur stated.
“And maybe that’s the true function of cinema: to not clarify, however to disclose; to not lead, however to succeed in out — even when that hand trembles, even whether it is fragile. A hand looking for connection at midnight.”