Credits

Director: Mountains

Synopsis

While looking for a new home for his family, a Haitian demolition worker is faced with the realities of redevelopment as he is tasked with dismantling his rapidly gentrifying Miami neighborhood.

Biography

Monica Sorelle is a Haitian-American filmmaker and artist born & based in Miami. Her work explores alienation and displacement, and preserves cultural traditions within Miami & the Caribbean, with a focus on the African & Latin diasporas that reside there.

Monica’s feature directorial debut, Mountains, world premiered at Tribeca Festival, where it was awarded a Special Jury Mention in the U.S. Narrative Feature competition. It went on to have its international premiere at TIFF, was awarded at the BlackStar, Indie Memphis, New Hampshire Film Festival, and Charlotte Film Festivals, and selected at festivals around the world including AFI Fest, Mill Valley Film Festival and American Film FestivaI.

As a creative producer, Monica’s short films have won top prizes at Berlinale, BlackStar and Miami Film Festival; have been selected at Sundance, New Orleans Film Festival, and New Directors/New Films; and acquired by Criterion Channel and Indiana University Black Film Center & Archive.

Her photo and video work has been shown in group exhibitions at Oolite Arts, Art and Culture Center/Hollywood, and on PAMM TV, and supported by Pérez Art Museum Miami’s Caribbean Cultural Institute Artist Fellowship, Locust Project’s Wavemaker Grant, and Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs. In 2023, she received an Ellies Creator Award and was selected as a recipient of the South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship.

Monica is a member of Third Horizon, a creative collective dedicated to developing, producing, exhibiting and distributing work which gives voice to stories of the Caribbean, its diaspora, and other marginalized & underrepresented spaces in the Global South.