film

Fatal Assistance

Director

Raoul Peck

 

Development support

 

Haitian born filmmaker Raoul Peck takes us on a 2-year journey inside the challenging, contradictory and colossal rebuilding efforts in post-earthquake Haiti. Through its provocative and radical point of view, the film offers a devastating indictment of the international community’s post-disaster idealism. While noting that a major portion of the money pledged was never disbursed, nor made it into the actual reconstruction.

Long Synopsis

This gigantic bacchanal featured, in no specific order, all international agencies, most the world NGOs, former President Bill Clinton, plane loads of the generous to adventurous and the occasional Hollywood star. The unstoppable Aid machine has taken the lead over the Haitian institutions, the President, his government, and the Haitian civil society, cutting short all of their initial activities resulting, three years later, in a long trail of institutional and human stubbornness.

The film dives headlong into the complexity of the reconstruction process and the practice and impact of worldwide humanitarian and development aid, revealing in the most disturbing way the extent of a general failure.

This crushing fact based documentary film, is the definitive blow to any selfcongratulatory institutional reports. FATAL ASSISTANCE leads to the only plausible outcome: immediate stop of current aid policies and practice.