Overview:
With AbiZe, Haitian filmmaker Luc Junior Ségur transforms heartbreak into a strong brief movie that blends silence, grief and resilience. Via this shifting 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 brief movie by director Luc Junior Ségur, created from deep private heartbreak and shot towards the backdrop of Haiti’s instability, is now a finalist on the Toronto Worldwide Nollywood Movie Pageant (TINFF), incomes nominations for Finest Director – Worldwide Quick Movie and Finest French Movie.
“AbiZe saved me, ” Ségur shared. “AbiZe is greater than a movie; it’s a chunk of my soul.”
In late September, Haitian audiences will lastly uncover “AbiZe,” the 17-minute brief 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 pageant circuit for its emotional honesty and restrained storytelling. Critics say the nominations spotlight not solely Ségur’s inventive energy 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 endlessly. However as an alternative of collapsing, I selected to create. Making this movie turned my method out. In some ways, it saved me. It gave me a language to specific what I couldn’t clarify — a solution to survive one thing that felt mindless”
Luc Junior Ségur, Haitian filmmaker.
It portrays grief not by way of dialogue however by way of the load of what can’t be mentioned: buried feelings, solitude, introspection and the gradual means of therapeutic. For Ségur, silence was not an finish, however a starting — the start line for a movie that appears 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 endlessly. However as an alternative of collapsing, I selected to create,” Ségur mentioned.
“Making this movie turned my method out. In some ways, it saved me. It gave me a language to specific what I couldn’t clarify — a solution to survive one thing that felt mindless.”
Self-produced, the movie resists simple narrative formulation. It opts as an alternative for restraint, ambiguity and uncooked emotional resonance.
“As a director, I’ve at all times been drawn to emotional fact. I consider in cinema that resonates, not solely visually but in addition deeply, humanly.”
AbiZe: A fracture on the heart
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 by way of the story, the place intimacy, silence, and betrayal intersect.
The movie follows Ze, a younger man disillusioned with love, persuaded by a pal to attempt once more with Abi, a colleague. As their bond deepens, Abi utterly 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, recognized for “Kidnapping Inc.” and the Festival Quatre Chemins, who portrays Ze. Collectively, they carry to life this love story as fragile as it’s intense.
“When Luc informed me in regards to the mission and gave me the script, I instantly mentioned sure, as a result of I might already see myself in that character,” Jacinthe mentioned. “We labored actually exhausting to get so far, and I hope the movie makes its method and wins some awards.”
“AbiZe is greater than a movie: it’s a chunk of my soul. As a director, I’ve at all times been drawn to emotional fact. I consider 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 by way of grief and its disorientations. Its recognition at TINFF indicators each the universality of its themes and the rising visibility of Haitian impartial cinema.
“Sure, AbiZe could seem 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
Educated 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 means 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 concentrate on the unstated struggles of Haitian life.
His credit embrace work on movies reminiscent of 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 industrial or creative, his work is sure by a deep sensitivity to human emotion. With AbiZe, that sensitivity turns inward.
“If even one particular person watches this movie and feels rather less alone, then I’ll have completed one thing significant and true,” Ségur mentioned.
“And maybe that’s the true objective of cinema: to not clarify, however to disclose; to not lead, however to achieve out — even when that hand trembles, even whether it is fragile. A hand looking for connection at nighttime.”