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We talk a lot about “capturing a moment.” It’s an oddly aggressive term, but one that conveys urgency, necessity. And there is an urgency to capture the moment, the way of life, the particular cadence of the everyday, that Haitian-American director Monica Sorelle captures in her distinguished debut feature, “Mountains.” It’s one of IndieWire’s favorite films from Tribeca 2023 and last year’s fall festival season, and now finally getting a release in 2024. More than capturing it, though, Sorelle holds this moment in a warm, loving embrace.

“Mountains” gives us Xavier (Atibon Nazaire) and Esperance (Sheila Anozier), two Haitian immigrants in mid-life who are deeply embedded in the fabric of their Miami community. They’ve built a meaningful life — but need to work ever harder to maintain it. Esperance already works two jobs and Xavier is literally employed in a line of work that represents the massive changes happening around them.

From facial wars to a penguin friend, wandering surfers and Haitian immigrants in Miami, the independent film market is fun, thoughtful, varied and contending with a faster cadence of high performing studio wide releases. That’s exhilarating on one hand but, indie distribution executives say, is making it increasingly difficult to date their films after having a pretty clear field for the first half of 2024.

New this weekend: IFC Films’ Elizabeth Banks-starring Skincare on 768 screens. Banks is Hope Goldman, a legendary Hollywood facialist to the stars preparing to enter the next phase of her career with a new line of skincare products in this dark comedy. Sensing that someone is trying to sabotage her business and destroy her life, she starts investigating to save what she’s built by any means necessary.

Loosely inspired by a real case involving aesthetician Dawn DaLuise, who did some prison time for putting...

There are a lot of jobs in America that make the world a worse place to live. Most people keep working those jobs. Filmmaker Monica Sorelle looks to explain how that bitter pill gets swallowed in her debut feature “Mountains,” which follows Xavier (Atibon Nazaire), a blue-collar Haitian American who becomes complicit in gentrifying his own neighborhood.

After a low-key festival run, the Tribeca discovery is getting a limited opening in New York and L.A., but not before a theatrical bow in Miami — the film’s setting and Sorelle’s birthplace. That hometown pride is evident in “Mountains,” which carries an undeniable veracity and compassion. Its narrative proves less insightful, however: too wary to crack into its protagonist’s troubled psyche, softening the film’s worthwhile political anxieties into sympathetic messaging that seems ho-hum and predetermined.

Like many American immigrants, gentle giant Xavier aspires to provide a better life for his family.

Monica Sorelle’s Mountains is a film about work that nonetheless champions leisure. As Esperance (Sheila Anozier) suggests to her husband Xavier (Atibon Nazaire), “If work was a good thing, the rich would have taken it for themselves.” Mountains interprets leisure not so much as the opposite of work or struggle, but a stance that can and should suffuse each moment of life, not discounting those we sell to make a living.

Xavier and Esperance are Haitian immigrants living with their adult son, Junior (Chris Renoir), in Miami’s rapidly gentrifying Little Haiti neighborhood. Whether recompensed or not, each has their work: Xavier is a demolition worker, Esperance a crossing guard and dressmaker, and Junior, to the consternation of his parents, aspires to be stand-up comedian. An incident of on-the-job racism, complicated in that it involves a Cuban immigrant (Yaniel Castillo) tussling with Xavier’s Black American coworker (Roscoè B. Thické III...

Last year, at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival, the gentrification drama “Mountains” made its mark. Directed by newcomers Monica Sorelle and starring Atibon Nazaire, Sheila Anozier, Chris Renois, and Kerline Alce, the film centers on a Haitian demolition worker who is faced with the realities of the redevelopment as he is tasked with dismantling his rapidly gentrifying neighborhood.

Our review from Playlist writer Christian Gallichio described the film as “striking… [a] debut from a filmmaker to watch.” Sorelle won the “Someone to Watch” Independent Spirit Award that year, and Nazaire was nominated for Best Breakthrough Performance at the same award ceremony.

Continue reading ‘Mountains’ Trailer: Monica Sorelle’s Indie Spirit-Winning Debut Opens August 16 In Limited Release at The Playlist.

"Let's do a little dreaming together, love." Music Box Films has revealed an official trailer for Mountains, an indie film shot in Miami that is finally getting a proper release starting in August. This one premiered at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival last year, and hit tons of other festivals throughout the year. It ended up with a surprising nomination at the 2024 Indie Spirit Awards earlier this year, along with winning the "Someone To Watch" award. In the film, a Haitian demolition worker is faced with the realities of redevelopment as he is tasked with dismantling his rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. Filmmaker Monica Sorelle's tender feature debut is described as "a multi-generational drama that deftly explores the relationships between immigrants and their children, the looming threat of gentrification, and the pursuit of the American dream." Starring Atibon Nazaire as Xavier, Sheila Anozier as his wife Esperance, and Chris Renois as Junior.

One of our favorites upon its Tribeca Festival debut last year, Monica Sorelle’s feature debut Mountains went on to be selected for TIFF and AFI Fest, and secured an Indie Spirit Award win with the “Someone to Watch” award. Now set for an August 16 release in Miami and a week later in NYC, the first trailer has arrived.

Here’s the synopsis: “In Miami’s Little Haiti, Xavier (Atibon Nazaire) makes a living as a demolition worker while his wife Esperance (Sheila Anozier) holds down two jobs to sustain their cozy household. Their routine is tested when their son Junior (Chris Renois) returns home after dropping out of college. Xavier and Esperance struggle to relate with Junior, who is no longer interested in speaking Creole with them and harbors ambitions of an artistic career path they do not understand. Xavier aspires to buy a more spacious house for his family,...

Exclusive: Music Box Films has acquired drama Mountains, the debut feature from Miami-based Haitian-American co-writer-director Monica Sorelle, who took home the Someone to Watch prize at this year’s Independent Spirit Awards.

Music Box will kick off the release with a hometown theatrical premiere on August 16 in Miami, followed by New York on August 23. A national expansion in key markets will follow.

The film looks at the intergenerational frictions within a Haitian-American family in a rapidly gentrifying Miami, exploring the desires and conflicts of three main characters: Xavier (Atibon Nazaire), a middle-aged demolition worker, his wife Esperance (Sheila Anozier), who works as both a seamstress and crossing guard, and their adult son Junior (Chris Renois), who finds himself caught between two cultures as he pursues a clandestine career in stand-up comedy.

Mountains premiered at Tribeca Festival, where it received a Special Jury Mention for Best Narrative Film. It also won...

Exclusive: Fusion Entertainment has signed Monica Sorelle (director and co-writer), Robert Colom (co-writer and producer) and Chris Renois (actor), the trio behind the acclaimed independent drama Mountains.

The film premiered at Tribeca Festival, where it received Special Jury Mention for Best Narrative Film. It also won the audience award at BlackStar and was an official selection at the Toronto Film Festival. Mountains has garnered glowing reviews, with Deadline calling it “Affecting and meditative… An enormously impressive feature debut. It will have its Los Angeles premiere at the upcoming AFI Fest.

Mountains marks the debut feature of Miami-based Haitian-American writer-director Sorelle, also a producer and visual artist who worked in the casting department on Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight. The film is a loving look at the intergenerational frictions within a Haitian-American family in a rapidly gentrifying Miami, exploring the desires and conflicts of three main characters: Xavier (Atibon Nazaire), a middle-aged demolition...

Watching Mountains, which just made its international debut as part of the Toronto Film Festival’s Centerpiece program, I could not help but think of two other landmark films it seems to recall in its own way. One was 2019’s The Last Black Man In San Francisco, a remarkable story of gentrification and its effect on those being edged out of their home that starred Jimmie Falls and launched the career of Jonathan Majors. The other was the 1960 film version of Lorraine Hansberry’s oft-performed A Raisin in the Sun in which Sidney Poitier as Walter Lee Younger played a struggling husband, son and father with a dream for a new house and a better life for his family.

Put them together and you have the bones of what makes director and co-writer (with producer Robert Colom) Monica Sorelle’s affecting and meditative debut feature so powerful. The film had...

In her directorial debut Mountains, Monica Sorelle approaches the story of a Haitian family confronting gentrification with a delicate and discerning eye. The languidly paced feature observes Xavier (Atibon Nazaire), a demolition worker contemplating buying a better home while navigating the implications of his Miami neighborhood’s changing dynamics.

Xavier, his wife Esperance (Sheila Anozier) and their adult son Junior (Chris Renois) live in Little Haiti, a vibrant enclave in Miami that’s home to tens of thousands of Haitian immigrants. The neighborhood’s name is credited to Viter Juste, an activist who moved to Miami from Brooklyn in 1973 and convinced other Haitians to join him. The area’s proximity to both the beach and the city’s downtown made it attractive. Today, its protection from major flooding — it’s 10 feet above sea level — has caught the eye of developers and real estate agents. They’ve marketed Little Haiti as...

It is the debut from Haitian-American filmmaker Monica Sorelle.

UK-France sales outfit Alief has acquired international sales for Haitian-American filmmaker Monica Sorelle’s debut feature Mountains, ahead of its world premiere at Tribeca next month.

The drama, which will play in the US narrative competition, follows a family of Haitian migrants living in Miami, grappling with ambitions for a better life and a college dropout son, who is secretly harbouring a dream to be a stand-up comedian.

It is produced by Cuban-American Robert Colom and stars Atibon Nazaire, Sheila Anozier and Chris Renois, with a script from Sorelle and Colom.