Shirley Bruno
Writer / Director
Haïti
Shirley Bruno was born in Brooklyn, NY. She received a Masters from London Film School and a Masters II from Le Fresnoy – studio national des arts contemporains.
Her films draw from her Haitian heritage, both preserving and radicalizing her ancestral traditions and mythology. With a docufiction approach, she creates modern myths that expose the slippery spaces between the physical and metaphysical world, between collective memory and history. She explores the intimate violence in the things left unsaid that mark us.
Her films have screened festivals such as IKFF Hamburg, Uppsala International Short Film Fest, Zinebi Bilbao and museums such as Palais de Tokyo, Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Villa Médicis, La Galerie Municipale Vitry de Jean Collet, FRAC Dunkerque.
She lives and works between France, Haiti, New York City.
Project
Just Come // Been To
A fierce, cynical lawyer lives alone in Haiti.
Her niece, an idealistic documentary filmmaker comes back to live on the extended family land after living abroad most of her life.
The niece rediscovers the preserved house
in which she was born, passed down from generations and as the two women tensely occupy this house full of family history and secrets, eventually tongues loosen.
The niece begins to see her aunt’s personal journey as the only one who truly remained in Haiti, all the others making their lives abroad. But the niece also begins to uncover a family feud brewing over and land and her aunt’s scathing plan to take over the land herself.
In a mix of fiction & documentary, the film is about one middle-class family in Haiti and the unspoken lines often drawn between those who decide to stay behind and those who leave.
