My Friend the Mayor

Twenty-five years ago, under Baby-Doc's reign of terror, filmmaker Hans Fels was part of a film crew that shot the first French-Creole feature film on the island of Haiti. The film Anita was written and directed by the Haitian poet Rassoul Labuchin, who tried to visualise the real life of the Haitians in the form of a fairytale. This “fairytale” got Labuchin in a great deal of trouble. He and other members of the cast and crew were arrested and ended up in exile, if they were lucky. When Jean Bertrand Aristide rose to power in 1994 with the help of the Americans, Rassoul Labuchin returned to Haiti. Not long after, Aristide appointed him mayor of Port-au-Prince. The current turbulence in Haiti urged Hans Fels, who had always kept in touch with Labuchin, to travel to Port-au-Prince for the TV programme Tegenlicht (Backlight). When he arrived, he met his friend in a new guise – that of politician. A politician with an uncertain future because of his friendship with President Jean Bertrand Aristide. In Port-au-Prince, Fels follows the poet-politician who, despite opposition and renewed banishment looming on the horizon, keeps dreaming of a wonderful future for his island.