Plot

Filmed only a year after the deadly earthquake that struck Haiti in 2010, this film - named after the onomatopoeia its inhabitants invented to name the disaster - shows their testimonies of resilience.

Goudougoudou is the name Haitians invented for the 2010 earthquake. For those who made it through, the notion of 'being alive' was superseded by that of 'being survivors' in a world turned upside down by death and chaos. This intimate and penetrating documentary explores how people, in the aftermath of tragedy, grieve, struggle to regain a semblance of normality and aspire to new dreams.

Before January 12th 2010, many Haitians were unaware that the earth could tremble, that it could shake so hard it could make concrete collapse. Was this a punishment from God? Or the devil? Did the United States test a new bomb on Haiti? Whatever the interpretations, in the wake of the January 12th earthquake, a new word appears in Port-au-Prince: "Goudou Goudou," an onomatopoeic reference to the deafening noise of the earth trembling. A new word for this "thing" to which many Haitians, only a few days later, would learn the meaning of: earthquake. Was this a bad dream, a nightmare that escapes us and veers out of control? After the first responses, many Haitians found themselves in a totally unreal situation. A world where the dead seemed still alive and the living would doubt their own survival. At night, for weeks and months, sleep becomes difficult to find. Light sleep full of dismal images punctuated by rays of relief and hope here and there. This documentary revisits the memories, dreams and nightmares of a dozen men, women and children in Haiti after the earthquake. We meet people of flesh and bone, rather than the silent victims or "violent savages" of the Western news reports. Nor are our protagonists heroes, but simply people who, in spite of the grief and loss, try to keep moving forward and refuse to accept that Haiti has become a land of the living dead. And so we follow our protagonists through the chaotic pace of Port-au-Prince with its surreal landscape of destruction, to observe their daily fight for survival only to be suddenly confronted with those fragile silences, interrupting their activities to recount how deeply those terrible 40 seconds still resonate in their souls. We listen to the dignity with which the Haitian people have responded to the disaster, of the tens of thousands of people, who were rescued by their friends, their neighbors but also often by strangers. Finally, a woman and her daughter, traveling in a colorful and crowded bus, leaving the city to reach their family and showing us a Haiti that makes us forget the rubble of the cities; a Haiti of paradisaical Caribbean beaches, virgin rice fields, mango trees and Creole markets; a Haiti that insists on existing and challenges the ruins of the cities.