Monica Sorelle tells a nuanced story about community and change in her directorial debut, Mountains. At the heart of it are Xavier, Esperance, and Junior—a Haitian family living in Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood. Xavier works demolition as the area undergoes rapid gentrification. A bigger home catches his eye, fueling dreams of stability against pressures reshaping their world.
Mountains presents these intimate spaces and lives with thoughtful care. Sorelle, born in Miami to Haitian parents, invites us respectfully into her characters’ world. Her naturalistic approach finds meaning in little interactions like neighbors greeting each other daily. Subtleties speak volumes, from shifting social dynamics to a radio program linking Haiti’s trials to those of its diaspora.
While tensions percolate between races and generations, Sorelle’s primary focus remains on her protagonists’ resilience and the rhythms of their community. She depicts Little Haiti as a living, ever-evolving place, not a problem to be solved or lamented. Mountains ultimately honor the ordinary yet profoundly political acts of building home amid displacement—of cultivating presence despite forces that would see it dismantled.
Family and Community
At the heart of Mountains we find the Amozor family—Xavier, Esperance, and their adult son Junior. Xavier works demolition in a crew led by a Cuban American boss. As a contractor, he literally helps reshape the area. But seeing the transformations makes Xavier dream of a better home for his family.
Each day, Xavier returns exhausted after long overtime shifts. Yet for Esperance, her roles continue—crossing guard, seamstress, wife. She remains skeptical of Xavier’s home dreams, knowing life’s challenges. Their dynamics feel real through small details like Esperance cracking jokes to lift Xavier’s fatigue.
Junior dreams differently—to make people laugh onstage. But his parents struggle to understand this path. They worry as Junior lives back at home after college. His character reveals itself through interactions both tense and tender with his father.
Under the family story, tensions swell in Little Haiti. Gentrification alters the landscape physically and socially. At work, Xavier witnesses growing conflicts between the Cuban boss and Black workers.
Sorelle explores these interconnected pieces not through plot twists but moments—a neighborhood party, a comedy performance, overhearing hurtful words. The film drifts like life itself between joy and stress. Conflict feels true because we live with this family, sharing the intimate and political.
Through rhythmic scenes, Sorelle finds deeper truths in small exchanges rather than speeches. Her Little Haiti emerges fully formed, a place and people facing changes beyond their control. Its people’s resilience and each other are what truly matter, whether a neighborhood remains or not.
Capturing Community on Camera
Sorelle excels at coaxing rich performances from her cast. She understands that deeply human stories unfold through tiny gestures as much as bold actions. Viewers truly live alongside Xavier, Esperance, and Junior thanks to her actors’ skills.
Cinematographer Javier Labrador Deulofeu brings Sorelle’s Miami neighborhoods to vibrant life. His camera floats down crowded streets and peers inside homes. Locations breathe with personalities all their own. Whether dining outdoors or sewing within her walls, Esperance exists fully in place.
Production designer Helen Peña deserves praise for transporting audiences straight to the family’s tight but lovingly decorated space. Between photos, fabrics, and clutter, each object bears meaning. Colors pop yet comfort, reflecting a home built with care over years.
Inside this domestic world and beyond, Sorelle and Deulofeu frame shots to powerful effect. Golden light washes Esperance in a goddess’s glow during her work. A triangular doorway centers her conversation with subtle poetry. These images invite study like treasured art, each nuance unveiled with rewatches.
Attention to blocking honors the dignity of black bodies simply living. Xavier nestles among green leaves at a party, framed as if a Renaissance painting. Sorelle grants underseen communities space to shine in all their vibrance, beauty, and complexity, beyond surface struggles alone. Her vision lifts quotidian lives to epic scale through intimate particulars of place and people.
A Neighborhood’s Beating Heart
Sorelle brings Little Haiti to life as more than just a backdrop. She shows it as a living, breathing community—its vibrant streets dotted with familiar faces.
Esperance passes her days exchanging news, catching up with friends she’s known for years. For Xavier too, there’s solace in meeting the same neighbor each evening, shared greetings forming the rhythm of days.
Yet changing tides are evident. As homes fall in Xavier’s work, a sense of erasure grows. Newcomers replace longtime locals, transforming familiar routines. Gentler tones grow sterner on the radio, reporting struggle overseas and dissent at home.
Racism compounds these tensions. Overheard words sting Xavier at his jobsite. Slights torment Esperance house-hunting, facing subtly different treatment. Their dreams feel distant against such pressures.
Sorelle depicts this not through unrest but the minute details of a community under duress. Her sensitive portrayals find dignity for all, honoring those who give a place its soul despite facing removal.
Little Haiti’s beating heart remains its people, though new pulses disrupt the tempo. Their resilience is a protest in itself, cultivating belonging wherever roots take hold. By witnessing this, we gain a vision of resistance as life itself, lived fully despite all trying to smother it.
Breathing Life into Community
Sorelle’s greatest strength lies in her handling of the cast. Atibon Nazaire brings Xavier to life with quiet grace. Through his stance and mannerisms, we grasp a man balancing pride in survival with weariness of challenges unending.
Sheila Anozier likewise finds Esperance’s spirit in small gestures—her careful preparations recalling loves past and present. Esperance appears fully realized not through speeches but through pot of sos pwa and sewing corner always welcoming conversation.
Chris Renois brings nuance to Junior through seams of frustration with the expectations and opportunities facing someone straddling cultures. We grasp his yearning to find a place in both worlds through slumped silences, saying more than any monologue.
Key scenes reveal inner lives rather than declare them. Quiet moments carry volumes, from Xavier opening on a bed recalling lifetimes borne to Esperance crossing young ones with care for each child transcending duty.
Light dancing through leaves finds divinity even amid the community’s trials. Perspectives broaden through vignettes flowing like daily rhythms, not contrived crises. Sorelle cultivates care for her subjects through dignifying portrayals, owning neither outrage nor despair but faith that humanity perseveres through shared small graces.
Her actors convey a family’s essence far beyond words could. We grasp hopes, release burdens, and find purpose anew through watching lives almost familiar yet too rarely seen. Sorelle gifts a community’s beating heart through portraits, recognizing our shared dreams, whatever shore we call home.
A Gaze Into Everyday Grace
Sorelle invites viewers gently into private worlds. Her camera drifts through routines and textures often overlooked, finding poems in all. Meaning emerges from fleeting gestures rather than bold gestures alone.
Pacing flows like the rhythms of daily life, not dictated rhythms. Through relaxed scenes, we live alongside this community, grasping them as whole lives rather than issues to resolve.
In Little Haiti’s portrayal, Barry Jenkins’ empathetic eye shines through. Yet Sorelle grounds social issues within lives, not vice versa. She reflects the immigrant experience’s intimacy rather than narratives of isolation or victimhood.
Sorelle sees a neighborhood’s essence lies beyond struggles to its beating heart: family and togetherness. Even in trials, life persists through small graces between friends and family. Her focused lens dignifies lives too rarely seen beyond surface suffering alone.
By witnessing with care rather than voyeurism, viewers grasp how resistance emerges from living fully, as this community has, against all odds. Through ordinariness, Sorelle finds beauty powerful enough to move mountains.
A Glimpse of Lives Rarely Seen
Sorelle tells stories that need telling. With Mountains, this thoughtful director brings nuanced portraits of immigrant life to a broader view.
Her deft directing awards complexity to characters too often reduced. Performances feel richly human through her guidance. Issues confronting Little Haiti emerge as intricately as the rhythms of its people.
This debut shows a filmmaker attuned to subtleties shaping communities. As Sorelle grows, expect widening windows into underseen worlds. Her sensitive portrayals lift marginalized voices.
Mountains remains timely for sharing challenges still facing those deemed outside entrenched power. Yet Sorelle locates hope where it matters—in everyday acts of togetherness amid displacement.
By witnessing lives granted rarely than problems solved, viewers grasp resilience emerging from shared grounds, not singular struggles alone. In dignifying ordinary lives, Sorelle crafts chronicles sure to echo.
The Review
Mountains
Mountains offers a quietly profound glimpse into lives and communities rarely seen on screen. Through understated portraits of resilience, Sorelle locates hope in ordinary connections between people and places. Her naturalistic style cultivates empathy, granting dignity to those confronting disruption of home against uncertain new beginnings. In capturing intimacies that give Little Haiti its heartbeat, Sorelle honors resistance as life itself, lived to the fullest despite all that would smother it.
PROS
- Nuanced characterization that avoids stereotypes
- Authentic portrayal of Miami's Little Haiti community
- Subtle exploration of social themes like gentrification and racism
- Naturalistic direction finds poetry in everyday moments.
- Outstanding performances bring characters to life in grounded ways.
CONS
- Narrative feels loose; some subplots lack resolution.
- Pacing slow for some may test patience.
- Limited exploration of certain character arcs
