DOK Leipzig 2024: Twice into Oblivion (dir. Pierre Michel Jean) | Review
Haitian director Pierre Michel Jean’s latest film offers a powerful exploration of how silence and forgetting continue to shape our perception of history.
Twice into Oblivion (original title: L’oubli tue deux fois), directed by Haitian filmmaker Pierre Michel Jean, is a cinematic memorial to a tragedy that for many years remained in the shadow of history, and was an important step in realizing one of the brutal acts of violence of the 20th century. In 1937, on the orders of dictator Rafael Trujillo, a genocide of the Haitian population known as the “Parsley Massacre” was organized in the Dominican Republic. Hundreds of thousands died, and those who survived have long remained voiceless witnesses to this tragedy.
In his work, Pierre Michel Jean takes a careful approach to such a painful and almost undiscussed topic. He does not limit himself to retelling historical facts, but through the eyes of the last survivors, through their memories and experiences, creates a space for a deeper understanding not only of this tragedy, but also of what was behind it. For example, the movie begins with the fact that only one wrong word in an instant sealed the fate of the Haitians. This Spanish word perejil (parsley in English), mispronounced, became a death sentence for many Haitians.
The center of the film is the memory of an elderly man who lived through the sad events of those years, whose words become the basis of the film, through which the viewer is immersed in a story full of pain and untold words. The director screens the brave man in his usual environment – his everyday life. In this way, many ordinary everyday shots from the movie allow the viewers to create an understanding of the whole picture of the local population, thus becoming as if on the same level with the locals.
A reflection on how this horror was hidden from the eyes of the world community, how for several decades there was no recognition or apology for the crimes committed. The viewer leaves the movie theater with many questions, the answers to which are definitely not on the surface: Who is to blame for the genocide? Who should take responsibility for what happened, more than eighty years later?
Pierre Michel Jean’s film has a rare quality of intimacy that allows viewers not just to observe events, but to experience them on a personal level. The camera, as if gliding through empty and forgotten landscapes, captures long, meditative shots that create an atmosphere of oblivion and loneliness. Landscapes that overwhelm the movie and in which the characters reside – forgotten, abandoned, yet alive and ready to tell their story. Michel Jean carefully explores how a story that has long remained hidden now finds its truth and voice.
An important aspect of the movie is how it makes the viewer not only perceive the story on a factual level, but also feel it emotionally. The structure of the movie, the meditative shots, the quiet but powerful memories of the survivors, all create a deep emotional impact.
Twice into Oblivion, which won the Silver Dove Award in the Internationaler Wettbewerb Dokumentarfilm category, is certainly important as a remembrance and recognition, of how silence and forgetting continue to affect our perception of history, which in turn is certainly our present and future.
We attended the 67th edition of DOK Leipzig in person, from October 28th to November 3rd, 2024.
