By: Staff Writer
June 17, 2022
A Dominican Republic film, Bantu Mama, is still making rounds on the film-festival circuit a year after it first premiered.
Clarisse Albrecht, the film’s lead actress and screenplay writer, told Caribbean Magazine Plus that the movie is about a “French woman of African descent who travels to the Dominican Republic to smuggle drugs and she gets caught up. But, she managed to escape and she found herself in a house with three juveniles living by themselves and she became their mother figure as well and it will change her fate.”
The movie was filmed all in a small barrios in the Dominican Republic called Ensanche Capotillo, known for its violence and rough streets, but is where the film found its platform to bring voice to these artists. “It was important for us to show this kind of neighbourhood in a new light, not showing that it’s only violence and poverty that there is also people who live there. They have hopes and dreams and there is a lot of poetry and also happiness around. It’s not only darkness,” she said.
The DR is becoming a hotspot for filmmakers that want that island charm and scenery that is flexible for any budget film. She also said: “The film industry is doing very well. There is a lot of international filming. The next the next project and participating are from the United States and they’re both filming in in the Dominican Republic and there’s a lot of year international films from everywhere, so it’s a big filming location.”
She added: “The thing is that the Dominican Republic has a lot of diversity, you really have a lot of things to choose from. They have really, really big towns and big studios,” people would be “surprised” with the amount of quality studios on the Dominican Republic, Clarisse said.
Whether she prefers to call herself a writer or an actress, Clarisse said that she “always loved film and the cinema” since she was a young girl. She is also a singer/songwriter but Bantu Mama put her singing career on hold because she wanted to work with Herrera and create a movie that “interested” her.
Bantu Mama is being shown at different festivals around the United States, namely at the Indy Film Fest in Indianapolis this weekend and next weekend at the Nova Frontier Film Festival in Brooklyn New York.
About the waves she is making with the film, Clarisse said: “I’m Very excited that more than a year after its first premiere, the film is still touring around on film festivals. So I’m very excited and looking forward for more.
Nothing is bigger for Clarisse now than the Bantu Mama, but she has a second project she is working on with her film director Ivan Herrera, which they have not named yet but it will have “a lot of water.” Pretty good teaser for the environmentally conscious among us.
