Kanaval

It is 1975, during the carnival celebrations of a small Haitian port town nine-year-old Rico delights in the festivities but returns home to find his schoolteacher mother under attack. They flee together to rural Quebec where they are taken in by a kindly couple. Struggling to adjust to Canada, with its snow, racist villagers, and school bullies, Rico begins to slip into an imaginary world, inventing a half-animal, half-human friend from Haitian myth who becomes his guiding light. (Zlín Film Festival)