Una Sola Sangre (2018) is one of two films by Toronto-based director and educator Ésery Mondésir’s Radical Empathy Trilogy that are presented during Bwa Kayiman—Lakouzémi and address experiences of the Haitian diaspora. The other work, What Happens to A Dream Deferred (2020), shown as an installation, depicts how Haitians stranded at the Mexico/US border use their cultural practices to navigate a climate of exclusion. 

‘I have two homelands, but one blood’, says Silvia Garde in Una Sola Sangre. She and her siblings Silverio and Estela are first-generation Haitian-Cubans, whose father Sylvain Garde was part of an estimated half a million people who migrated for work in the early twentieth century after the occupation of Haiti by the US. Since then, they and their descendants have navigated a complex identity while facing the challenges posed by assimilation and discrimination. Their resilience and commitment to cultural preservation are reflected in their collaboration with Mondésir, screened as a prologue to the kongossa entitled The Many Paths of Return, which brings together Mondésir, the Port-au-Prince based poet, novelist, and songwriter Lyonel Trouillot, and Senegalese writer Ken Bugul. In the kongossa, they address themes of migration, exile, diaspora, and the impossibilities and creative potential of return within their respective work and contexts. 

Una Sola Sangre (2018) 

Written and directed by Ésery Mondésir

In collaboration with Silverio Garde, Estela Garde, Silvia Garde, Odilia Garde, Olaidis Garde, Modesto Garde, Eloy Moriyo, and Frailin & Rony

Cinematography by Ésery Mondésir

Editing by Ésery Mondésir, Damian Sainz

With financial support from York Graduate Scholarship, The Paavo and Aino Lukkari Human Rights Award, Lawrence Heisey Graduate Award in Fine Art