Youth in revolt

Exit 67, director Jepthé Bastien's compassionate story of a young Haitian gangster, is a first for Quebec cinema: it features a predominantly black cast and is set in St. Michel, a poor, multi-ethnic neighbourhood in northeastern Montreal that is largely ignored by the mainstream media.

Exit 67 probes the numerous social issues facing Montreal's growing Haitian community, like unemployment and family breakdown.

Bastien decided to make Exit 67 after his 16-year-old nephew, Tyler Jacobs, was killed in a gangland slaying in 2007. "When my nephew died, it hit my like a brick," says the Haitian-born director. "I wanted to figure out what had happened."

Although the film is a traditional gangster tale complete with gunfights, drug deals, hot chicks and clichéd talk of family and brotherhood, it also explores why young Haitians get involved with gangs in the first place. Through the central character, Jecko, the movie probes the numerous social issues facing Montreal's growing Haitian community, like unemployment and family breakdown.

"These kids are a product of their environment. Many are poor. They have been failed by family and the system," says the director. "In Quebec, we don't really like to acknowledge that [the Haitian offspring] were born here. They are the ‘other.’ But they are our children. We need to take care of them and we don't. They are simply clientele for the penal system."

As an eight-year-old boy, the character Jecko watches his white father bludgeon his Haitian mother to death while she sleeps. After his father is sent to prison, Jecko moves through more than a dozen foster homes. An angry, poorly educated adolescent desperate to belong, Jecko becomes easy prey for a low-level gang leader who promises to teach the young man to become a "lion." Much of the film follows Jecko in the decade after he decides to join the gang — and the effects this has on his psyche.

Jecko's social circumstances are not atypical for many black youths in Montreal. According to a comprehensive study released by McGill University this year, twice as many blacks as whites live in poverty, and they are also twice as likely to grow up in single-parent families. Nearly 40 per cent of black youth aged 15-24 have not completed high school. In one scene, Jecko's buddy rails against his father's advice to go to school. "Why should I go to school? My father went to university and he drives a cab."

Bastien, who comes from a middle-class family and is well educated, believes that he has been discriminated against in the tight-knit, predominantly white Quebec film and television community.

"Making this film is a dream of yesterday," says the director, who left Montreal in 1998 because he felt it was no place to practice his craft; a few years ago, he returned to give filmmaking another shot. "We pretend we are not racist in Quebec. There is a little clique that owns everything. I think it's time we see a different Quebec, where everyone who wants to bring something to the society, can."

This past July at the Los Angeles premiere of his feature The Trotsky, Montreal director Jacob Tierney told a La Presse reporter that he believed Quebec cinema was insular and didn't reflect the cultural diversity of the province. Although defended in some quarters, Tierney was accused of Quebec bashing.

Mainstream box-office hits in Quebec tend to be oriented toward white Francophones, but independent filmmakers such as Xavier Dolan (J'ai tue ma mere), Denis Villeneuve (Incendies), Philippe Falardeau (Congorama) and Denis Cote (Curling) have been winning prizes on the international festival circuit for pictures that explore universal themes and, at times, global politics; the only Québécois aspect of their films is that the characters speak French. Most of these films have been supported by Quebec's film financing body, Société de développement des enterprises culturelles (SODEC).

Black Montrealers, however, have yet to carve out a space for themselves in this province's film and television industry. But that may be changing.

"In 2008, I got a call from SODEC," says Bastien. "They told me that they were submitted 40 projects and four were accepted for funding — and two of them they believed absolutely had to be made. One of those two was Exit 67."

Despite SODEC's enthusiasm, Bastien remains cautiously optimistic.

"I fear that despite the fact that this door is open, I will have to start over again each time I make a film. I guess what will prove it to me that things are opening up is being able to make a second film."

Exit 67 is currently in theatres in Quebec.

Patricia Bailey is a writer and broadcaster based in Montreal.