La Belle Vie: The Good Life

A Journey to the other side of the Haitian experience.

La Belle Vie: The Good Life is a story of self-discovery as Haitian-American filmmaker; Rachelle Salnave ventures to confront the grace, and simultaneously the unseemliness, of her native ideologies. Born in New York City, but raised by an upper class patriotic Haitian family, forced to flee their island nation in adulthood, Rachelle comes of age in the midst of crossfire between two distinct cultures. The beliefs of her nurturing parents, the products of noble family histories, juxtaposed with the truth of her humble working class reality in Harlem USA, set the stage for an inner conflict that ultimately compels her to search for her own truth. With the proliferation of political turmoil, poverty, and the 5th year anniversary of the Earthquake that shattered the nation; this film in the end documents the filmmaker's burning desire to find a collective of people who manage to share similar identity issues but who turn love for their country as motivation to create change.