Within the movie “Testigo,” a Dominican girl whose house was raided by Dominican immigration brokers crosses the Dominican mountains towards Haiti looking for her little one who was deported. On her journey to the Haitian border, she meets individuals who share their tales as immigrants in hopes of being heard.
The movie — solely 17-minutes lengthy — attracts on testimonies from a 2025 report by Dominican-based non revenue group HaitianosRD that particulars the impression of mass deportations within the Dominican Republic. It was considered one of two movies featured Oct. 12 on the Maysles Documentary Center in Harlem as a part of the Nou Akoma Nou Sinèji Haitian Dominican Transnational Film Festival (NOU).
The festival, now in its fourth year, makes use of movie and storytelling to look at the Dominican and Haitian communities’ shared historical past and encourage larger understanding, whereas additionally chatting with the longstanding challenges surrounding migration, deportation and tensions between the 2 nations.
“We noticed the pageant as a possibility to embed ourselves in historical past, share tales, construct relationships and foster cultural satisfaction,” Clarivel Ruiz, founder and govt director of the Dominicans Love Haitians Movement, which organizes the pageant, advised Documented. “It’s a option to deliver folks collectively, broaden our work past New York Metropolis and provides hope to those that share related experiences however don’t know methods to categorical them.”
The pageant showcased movies and artwork by rising and established artists from Haitian and Dominican, African and Indigenous diasporas. Its October 2026 program paired panel discussions with movies starting from dramas and documentaries to experimental works and shorts.
The second movie of the day, “Melodrama,” follows Sonia, a lately widowed Dominican girl pressured to promote her longtime house following the loss of life of her husband and begin over in an condo overlooking the Caribbean Sea. There, she meets Aimé, a Haitian building employee. Their relationship challenges racial and sophistication prejudice towards the backdrop of tensions between Haitians and Dominicans.
The movie, chosen because the Dominican Republic’s official submission for the 2027 Academy Awards, is greater than only a love story. It explores themes of discrimination and nationwide identification and exposes how attitudes towards migrants form relationships not solely on Hispaniola but additionally amongst Haitians and Dominicans dwelling in New York.
Ruiz mentioned the pageant is supposed to provide folks the house to look at historical past, and share experiences whereas constructing relationships.
Historic strains between Haitians and Dominicans have deep roots in racial prejudice which have performed out in modern-day political disputes. These tensions had been lately reignited throughout New York’s Democratic primaries, when a senior adviser to U.S. Rep. Adriano Espaillat, who’s the primary Dominican American to serve within the U.S. Home of Representatives, made controversial remarks in Spanish-language media claiming that progressive challenger Darializa Avila Chevalier, a neighborhood organizer of Dominican descent, supposed to “substitute Dominican New Yorkers with Muslims and Haitians.”
The remarks triggered a public backlash and Mayor Zohran Mamdani condemned using “Haitian” as a racial slur. Espaillat disavowed the remarks and urged his supporters to cease questioning Chevalier’s Dominican identification.
With the assumption that historical past informs the current, Ruiz defined that utilizing movie to shine a lightweight on the historical past of discrimination towards Haitians within the Dominican Republic is a vital option to forestall related discrimination elsewhere and sooner or later.
“Eager about what occurred within the Dominican Republic with the stripping of citizenship [from those in the Dominican with Haitian descent], we knew that was coming [in the U.S.],” they mentioned. “We wanted to lift the alarm since you get one human being in the fitting place on the proper time, and they’ll do the identical factor. And right here lies Trump.”
Following the 2 movies, organizers held a post-screening dialogue the place attendees had been inspired to share their ideas and tales. For Wallace Jean, a Bronx native with a Haitian mom and a Dominican father, the dialogue was enlightening and in addition private. Jean mentioned his mom, who’s light-skinned, and his father, who’s dark-skinned, formed his understanding of colorism and household identification.
Rising up in New York additionally formed his sense of belonging whereas he identifies as American with Caribbean roots. He linked immigration enforcement within the Dominican Republic with what he’s been seeing in the US with ICE raids and arrests, saying his personal Dominican cousin fears stepping outdoors with out papers.
“If you go to DR, if you’re in DR, you’ll see the identical habits as right here with ICE. It’s the identical techniques that they do over there. It’s the identical coverage as a result of once more, it’s discovered habits,” he mentioned.
One of many individuals, Haitian-American and historian Ayanna Legros, linked the movies’ themes to policing and immigrant communities in New York. Individuals can carry racial prejudices from one nation into one other, she mentioned, and argued that officers of colour can be individuals in a system that harms Black folks. “When somebody migrates to a different nation, they carry these ideas and concepts with them into a brand new place.”
Different individuals mentioned methods to problem these cross-generational patterns. They prompt plenty of concepts to begin: studying about each other’s histories, discussing the movies with family and friends, sharing them by way of faculties, church buildings, neighborhood organizations and social media, and supporting teams that work immediately with migrants.
“The easy incontrovertible fact that we will discuss it [the tension between the two communities] to your pals’ households is one step,” mentioned panelist Jimmy Jean-Louis, the lead actor who performed the character Aimé in “Melodrama”.
For Ruiz, the aim is to take the conversations past the screening room. By sharing tales and supporting these affected by discrimination and deportations they hope Haitians and Dominicans can construct relationships that problem inherited prejudice and strengthen solidarity in New York and past.
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