Je m’appelle Nina Shakira, My Name is Nina Shakira

Nina Shakira, 12, lives for her love of books. When her mother – a sex worker in Port-au-Prince – becomes entangled in debt, Nina is also forced onto the sidewalks of Grande Rue. There, she meets Yvon, a professor who introduces her to Port-au-Prince’s intellectual circles. Through this connection, Nina begins to write. Soon, her novel comes to eclipse everything else – her lover, her friends, even her family. Nina Shakira writes to be published, and to forge for herself a destiny worthy of her dreams.

By adapting Orcel’s novel, I want to harnessthe power of cinema to draw public attention to the plight of sex workers – and, more broadly, to my country, so little known and so often reduced to a handful of clichés. On January 12, 2010, Port-au-Prince was devastated by an earthquake that claimed over 300,000 lives. Fifteen years later, the country has still not been rebuilt. The traces of the disaster are visible everywhere, yet the people continue to fight to stand tall and live with dignity. My Name is Nina Shakira is a film about the vital force of Haitian poetry – and an ode to its people.