Rico (Rayan Dieudonné) is a curious boy, living with his schoolteacher mother Erzulie (Penande Estime) in a small port town on the coast of Haiti in 1975. During an annual celebration, and despite his mother’s warnings of danger, he slips out into the night to witness the town’s carnival celebrations. We see Kanaval — the Haitian version of Carnival — from the point-of-view of Rico, as a blending together of real and magical moments. Everything is exuberant and fascinating, until he returns home to find his beloved mother being attacked.

Migrating to safety in a small rural town in Quebec, Rico and Erzulie try their best to get accustomed to their new world with the assistance of an older couple that warmly takes them in. While Rico tries to make sense of this snowy province, with hunting, snowmobiling, and racist bullies all around, he’s unable to grasp why his mother, still grappling with her trauma, is becoming distant from him. So he does what many six-year-olds do, and conjures up an imaginary friend, Kana, from Haitian myth, who becomes his guide to figuring out the alien world he’s found himself in.

Photo credit: Wady Films