Fatal Assistance
Thursday, June 20, 2013
Festival Centerpiece — US premiere! Filmmaker in person!
Award-winning Haitian born filmmaker Raoul Peck takes us on a two-year journey inside the challenging, contradictory, and colossal rebuilding efforts in post-earthquake Haiti. Through its provocative and radical point of view, FATAL ASSISTANCE offers a devastating indictment of the international community’s post-disaster idealism. The film dives headlong into the complexity of the reconstruction process and the practices and impact of worldwide humanitarian and development aid, revealing the disturbing extent of a general failure. We learn that a major portion of the money pledged to Haiti was never disbursed, nor made it into the actual reconstruction. Fatal Assistance leads us to one clear conclusion: current aid policies and practice in Haiti need to stop immediately.
Presented in association with Margaret Mead Film Festival www.amnh.org and Tribeca Film Festival, www.tribecafilm.com
In August 2011 Human Rights Watch issued a report on the serious gaps in access to health care services harming women and girls displaced after the January 12, 2010 earthquake in Haiti. The report documents the lack of access to reproductive and maternal care in post-earthquake Haiti, even with the unprecedented availability of free health care services. Aid agencies worked to provide care that many women and girls did not benefit from due to lack of information and poor transportation. Moreover, the lack of coordination and data sharing on the part of donors and nongovernmental organizations made it difficult for human rights monitors, and the government itself, to assess the impact of these services.
- Country Haiti/France/US
- Language In English and French and Haitian Creole with English subtitles
- Running Time 100 minutes
- Director Raoul Peck
IFC Center does not generally provide advisories about subject matter or potentially triggering content in films, as sensitivities vary from person to person. In addition to the synopses, trailers and other links on our website, further information about content and age-appropriateness for specific films can be found on Common Sense Media, IMDb and DoesTheDogDie.com as well as through general internet searches.