Sugar Island

Sugar Island

TIFF65: Greek Premiere
Makenya leaves behind fun and dancing with her friends in search of work; an unwanted pregnancy confronts her with sudden adulthood. The teenager lives alongside her grandfather and mother in the Batey, a Dominican-Haitian community of sugarcane workers. Her mother is a servant of the Mysteries within the 21 Divisions of Afro-Dominican spirituality, and her grandfather is an activist for pension rights. The mechanization of the sugar industry threatens to displace them without compensation. The family resists the change. Makenya reunites with her friends in a parallel, Afro-futuristic dimension. In a theatrical exercise, they read documents from the colonial era, recall the black uprisings on the island, and recover ancestral knowledge that forms a sort of anti-racist and decolonial manifesto. Frustration opens the door to her dimension of social activism; she accompanies her grandfather to protests demanding justice for the cane workers and later receives guidance from the Mysteries through her mother. At last, she finds her power.
Screening Schedule

No physical screenings scheduled.

Direction: Johanné Gómez Terrero
Script: Johanné Gómez Terrero
Cinematography: Alván Prado
Editing: Raúl Barreras
Sound: Homer Mora
Music: Jonay Armas, Gagá de la 30
Actors: Yelidá Díaz, Juan María Almonte, Ruth Emeterio, Génesis Piñeyro, Diógenes Medina
Production: Guasábara Cine
Producers: Fernando Santos Díaz
Co-production: Tinglado Film
Co-producers: David Baute
Costumes: Palma Ruiz
Format: DCP
Color: Color
Production Country: Dominican Republic, Spain
Duration: 91'
Contact: Patra Spanou Film

Johanné Gómez Terrero

Johanné Gómez Terrero is an Afro-diasporic artist who positions her work within a Caribbean and decolonial framework. The documentary Caribbean Fantasy sparked her career as a director; Sugar Island, her latest feature, is a project that navigates a porous boundary between reality and fiction. She is also a producer, consultant, and artistic director of the project development lab MiradasAfro. A graduate of the International School of Film and TV in San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba [EICTV], where she has returned as a teacher and chair coordinator. She also followed the Master’s program in Film Distribution at Catalonia's School of Film and Audiovisual Media [ESCAC]. Her fields of interest and study encompasses complex thinking, anti-racist struggle, and Cimarron cinema.

Filmography

2014 Bajo las carpas (doc)
2016 Caribbean Fantasy (doc)
2024 Sugar Island