Marie Madeleine, the new fiction feature film by Gessica Généus, shot in Haiti, has been selected for the 2026 Cannes Film Festival in the Cannes Première section. This marks the Haitian director’s second selection at Cannes, following Freda (Un Certain Regard, 2021).
Marie Madeleine is the story of an encounter. In Jacmel, Haiti, the sea, the churches, and the spirits shape everyday life. Marie Madeleine is a free woman. She lives from prostitution and moves through the nights without submitting to the rules of those who claim to save souls. Her path crosses that of Joseph, a young evangelist. A relationship forms between these two beings who seem to have nothing in common. As Joseph’s faith begins to falter, Marie Madeleine draws him into a world where desire and the search for freedom open up a space in which everything can be reinvented.
With Marie Madeleine, her new feature film, Gessica Généus reaches a new milestone. Shot in Haiti under increasingly constrained conditions, the film extends and intensifies her cinematic vision. She asserts a cinema of presence, where bodies, faces, and individual trajectories become the site of a collective story. In a country now largely inaccessible to filmmaking, her work stands as both an artistic commitment and a necessity.
This selection also marks SaNoSi Productions’ fifth appearance at the Cannes Film Festival, following:
- To the Four Winds (Libre) by Michel Toesca and The Grand Ball (Le Grand Bal) by Laetitia Carton (2018)
- H6 by Ye Ye and Freda by Gessica Généus (2021)
Special thanks to our distributor, Pyramide Films, and to the film’s co-producers: Ayizan Productions, Metafilms, Stenola Productions, and Bidibul Productions.
See you in Cannes on May 12th!
