Jean Louis stars in ‘The Empty Box’
Haitian actor, Jimmy Jean-Louis stars in ‘The Empty Box’, set to be screened at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), TIFF takes place from Sept. 8 – 18. The film, directed by Mexican filmmaker Claudia Sainte-Luce, features Jean-Louis, an illegal Haitian immigrant living in Mexico. The film follows the paradox of family life by highlighting the life of an estranged father and daughter. The two are brought together by an illness where they start to find ways of restructuring the bonds broken by neglect. Jazmin, played by the Sainte-Luce, is a young woman living in Mexico City and is surprised when she gets a call informing her that her father, Toussaint, is ill suffering from vascular dementia and finds herself having to care for a man who is more a stranger to her. The movie moves from the two characters’ points of view showing the fathers deteriorating mental state as his memories of become clearer than his present reality and he begins to have less and less lucid moments. At first reluctant to share her world with her father, Jazmin slowly begins to open up to him realizing that his hold on reality is gradually feeble and the time for reconciliation is ultimately now or never.
