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In an effort to understand where she came from, Fabiola asked a question that became the central phrase of the film: what would my life have been like if I’d stayed in Haiti? Taking as her starting point her biological mother’s precarious economic situation, she had no choice but to entrust her daughter to her care. Fabiola could have ended up restavek, or in a loving foster family, or on the streets abandoned to her fate, or adopted abroad.

The film deals with a universal theme that appeals to audiences of all ages, referring to human dignity, our need for consolation and humanism, at a time when migration and empathy are the great challenges of our century. Fabiola arrived in Montreal on July 24, 2000 at the age of three and a half. Faced with the dizziness of adulthood and her own coming into the world as a woman, I suggested that she return to Haiti and discover and film the land of her ancestors through her eyes and from her point of view. I suggested that she hold the camera and choose the framing. Redo the flashback trip I made 20 years ago, when I went to look for her when Port-au-Prince was under the terrifying sway of the Chimères.

This documentary is a telescoping of women’s stories: first my subject Fabiola, then her sister Justine and myself. A dialogue between the adoptive mother, her dauther and the biological mother. More than anything else, this documentary is a journey of initiation through Fabiola’s eyes, eyes and perspective on her origins.