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Mountains Is a Quietly Magnificent Debut
Monica Sorelle’s first feature film is a vibrant story of gentrification and generational divides in Miami’s Little Haiti.
This idea bubbled to the surface of my mind when I watched Mountains and the whisper-still, evocative lead performance of Atibon Nazaire as Xavier, a middle-aged Haitian immigrant construction worker in his adopted home of Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood. When her camera enters into the family home, I was immediately bowled over by the production design from Helen Peña, the art direction by Nadia Wolff, and the set decoration by Dezray Smith, all of which Sorelle and cinematographer Javier Labrador Deulofeu frame with structured, angled grace. Aqua-green light streaming into the bedroom, brightening Xavier’s skin as he talks to his son about his relationship to their homeland, a country that has been suffering for hundreds of years for daring to enact a slave rebellion that proved so successful it continues to shake the foundations of the world order.
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