Brownstein: Haitian filmmaker laughs to get through the horror

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A comedy about kidnapping in Haiti? That sounds like quite the stretch.

But that’s precisely what Haitian director/co-writer/producer Bruno Mourral had in mind for his provocative dark comedy Kidnapping Inc., which speaks bluntly to the turmoil in his country. The film screens Friday as part of the 20th Montreal International Black Film Festival, with Mourral in attendance.

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The backstory to Kidnapping Inc. is anything but comedic. Mourral’s father, Henri Paul Mourral, was killed in 2005 while serving as an honorary French consular official.

And in a case of life freakishly imitating art some 15 years later, three members of Mourral’s Kidnapping Inc. crew were actually kidnapped and held for ransom in the midst of production.

“My dad was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, as so often happens in my country,” Mourral recounts in a Zoom interview prior to arriving in Montreal. “He wasn’t a political player at all.”

Mourral goes on to explain that after attending his dad’s funeral, he had the idea to make a film about the rash of kidnappings in Haiti and soon started interviewing people who had been abducted.

“But as they were telling me their stories, the weird thing was that their stories were making me laugh, because, as we say in Haiti, they were putting spice in their stories. They were laughing too, because it was all so absurd. Which is so often the case there: people trying to deal with so much tragedy and weight on their shoulders are able to get through it with humour.

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“I’ve seen this often, even after our big earthquake (in 2010). People take the most dramatic of situations and look for a funnier way to talk about it, so it is not as heavy as it should normally be. Haitians are far more funny and creative than many perceive them to be. So I said to myself that doing a comedy on the subject would be the best way to make this,” notes Mourral, who, true to form, made his mark as a director of commercials in a whimsical vein.

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Mourral takes plenty of potshots in Kidnapping Inc., particularly at the powers that be.

After the son of a well-heeled Haitian presidential candidate gets abducted and held for ransom by a pair of bunglers — more into soccer than crime — the situation becomes more surreal and absurd when the kidnap victim is accidentally killed by a potato tossed his way. The kidnappers then happen upon a man who resembles the dead hostage. They figure their boss who ordered the abduction might not know the difference, and that they might be able to escape with their bodies intact.

But they’re caught in a political conspiracy far above their pay grade. Making matters messier is that their new victim’s wife — who was also abducted in the caper — was nine months pregnant and the tension from the kidnapping has induced a sudden roadside birth, with the bad guys doing the delivery rather adeptly.

Jasmuel Andri and Rolaphton Mercure bring an excellent touch to proceedings as the inept kidnappers. “But my direction to them was to play their parts dramatically, not comedically,” Mourral says. “It worked.”

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This is Mourral’s debut feature film, and it surely won’t be his last. A hit at the 2024 Sundance fest — where it premièred — it is already receiving acclaim in France, where it’s opening wide.

Finishing the film was no small task. As Mourral was preparing to shoot in Port-au-Prince, with a police escort, a car broke into the middle of their procession of production vehicles and stopped one of the trucks.

“These guys got out of their vehicle armed with heavy weapons and grabbed three people on our team and took off with them and their truck. It happened in about 10 seconds,” Mourral recalls. “Then we soon found out that they were being held for $3 million ransom. We tried to negotiate with the kidnappers.” But to no avail.

The hostages were Dominican, and Mourral credits that country’s president for putting pressure on the Haitian president to do something or, failing that, Dominican forces would act.

“Then the situation got somehow resolved, with someone having paid the ransom price. Then I got a call from a Haitian police official to go to a station late at night, and after another three days of investigation — because they suspected it might be a fake kidnapping — the three Dominicans were freed. In the end, shooting resumed two weeks later, but problems still existed,” says Mourral, who also had to deal with retrieving his film equipment from customs.

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“Then Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in July 2021, and our team was scared to finish the film with all the chaos and shootings going on. And I thought then I was never going to finish the film. But somehow we did.”

While pre-production began several years earlier, shooting on Kidnapping Inc. started in the summer of 2019 and didn’t wrap until the fall of 2021. In the midst of it all, Mourral was fearful for the safety of his wife and five kids in Port-au-Prince.

Making movies is no picnic at the best of times. Mourral concurs that this was madness on a whole other level.

“Again, that’s why we Haitians need to laugh to deal with all our drama.”

AT A GLANCE

Kidnapping Inc. screens in its original Creole and French version with English subtitles Friday, Sept. 27 at 8:30 p.m. at the Concordia University Theatre, 1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. W. A Q&A with director Bruno Mourral follows the screening.

The 20th Montreal International Black Film Festival continues through Sunday, Sept. 29. For tickets and more information, visit montrealblackfilm.com.

bbrownstein@postmedia.com

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