Like with Freda in 2021, the standing ovation for Gessica Généus’s new film lasted for several long minutes. This time, the audience in the Debussy theater at the Cannes Film Festival palace began reacting well before the lights came back on.

Marie Madeleine, like Freda, presents a real and unfiltered Haiti. All of our misery is laid bare, even the kind that becomes so visible that we eventually stop seeing it. But Marie Madeleine is also a universal story that could have unfolded in a thousand other cities.