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A woman sits in the back of a truck smoking a cigarette with her eyes closed, she has bright red hair and wears a light pink tank in the early evening framed by a tree and a stone wall.

Marie Madeleine

  Gessica Généus  |  France, Haiti, Belgium, Luxembourg, Canada

Following up her acclaimed debut Freda, Haitian filmmaker Gessica Généus directs and stars in Marie Madeleine, tracking the sensual interior life of a fiercely independent sex worker in Jacmel. When her path crosses with Joseph, a young man trapped under the thumb of his fanatical father and an austere church community, their immediate connection ignites sparks of spiritual and social resistance.

Généus crafts an evocative drama moving fluidly between evangelical rallies, mystical sanctums, and ancestral Vodou traditions. Cinematographer Nicolas Canniccioni brings you straight to church and out into the streets, with lush textures, the film’s religious iconography grounding each frame in rich cultural devotion and textural warmth. Marie Madeleine operates as an intimate meditation on faith, bodily autonomy, and desire amid structural precarity.

 Haitian Creole, French 

 104 minutes

Screenings & Events

Screening

Sun, Oct 18 @ 12:30pm

at Logan Center, Screening Room
Venue information...

Festival passes can be used for this screening.

Screening

Mon, Oct 19 @ 5:30pm

at Gene Siskel Film Center, Screen 2
Venue information...

Festival passes can be used for this screening.

Media

Film Credits

  • Jean-Marie Gigon, Gessica Généus, Anton Iffland Stettner, Lilian Eche, Christel Henon, Sylvain Corbeil
  • Gessica Généus
  • Martial Salomon
  • Nicolas Canniccioni
  • Gessica Généus, Béonard Monteau, Edouard Baptiste, Melissa Mildort
  • SaNoSi Productions, Ayizan Productions, Stenola Productions, Bidibul, Metafilms

Sponsors

New Directors Competition Program Patron

Robert & Penelope Steiner Family Foundation

Cultural Support

Logo: Canada 313x100logo: Villa Albertine | Consulate General of France in Chicagologo: French Embassy in the United States 156x125

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