Indie Feature Doc Illuminates the U.S. Occupation of Haiti from 1915-1934 and Reverberations of Exploitation and Misinformation Today
LOS ANGELES, CA, UNITED STATES, February 17, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — Monkey Wrench Films announced today that The Forgotten Occupation: Jim Crow Goes to Haiti, the striking indie feature documentary from Haitian American filmmaker Alain Martin and executive producer and New York Times bestselling author Roxane Gay (Bad Feminist), will be released on TVOD and EVOD platforms worldwide today. The film is now available to rent and purchase globally across major digital retailers – including Amazon, Apple TV, Gathr, Google Play, Kanopy, kweliTV, Vimeo On Demand and YouTube Movies – bringing its urgent story of empire, migration, democracy and Haitian resilience to audiences’ living rooms.
Meticulously wrought through an intimate, posthumous letter to his late grandfather, The Forgotten Occupation spotlights a rarely examined period of U.S. intervention in Haiti from 1915-1934, unraveling the paradox of a man who longed for American rule and a nation scarred by it. Blending family memory with sweeping archival history, the film confronts exile, love, and the uneasy truths at the heart of freedom, centering Haitian voices and diasporic experience.
“You made a film that is unapologetically personal, not only in relationship to the letter to your grandfather (which I think works very well, by the way), but also in sharing legitimate convictions of your perspective as a result of the journey you took with the film,” said Sean Penn, Oscar-winning actor, director and longtime advocate for Haiti in a personal letter to the filmmaker, Alain Martin. “I love Haiti. Most often, I don’t know why. Until I remember the faces and the dreaming. I want to be a good thing for Haiti. I don’t know if your film and its timing is a good thing. Or even if it might be a great thing.”
“Making this film meant going back into a history many people in the United States have never been taught, but that has shaped every part of Haitian life,” said Alain Martin, director of The Forgotten Occupation. “The occupation is essential context for understanding why Haiti is where it is today, and why so many Haitians are forced to leave home in search of safety and opportunity. This film is, in every sense, a love letter to my homeland – to its people, its contradictions, its beauty, and its resilience – and the worldwide digital release is an invitation for others to see Haiti as more than crisis headlines.”
“Alain Martin’s The Forgotten Occupation is a masterful documentary,” said Roxane Gay, executive producer. “The love, care, and rigor Martin has brought to his storytelling not only reminds us about a brutal era in Haitian history, it shows us how that forgotten occupation has indelibly shaped our present without determining our future.”
“From the moment we saw The Forgotten Occupation, we knew this was not a chapter from a textbook, but rather an intricate cultural story that Alain has put together with such clarity and heart,” said Monkey Wrench Films’ Tom Putnam and Henry C. Lystad in a joint statement. “We’re proud to help bring this film to viewers everywhere at a time when this history seems more critical than ever to global awareness.”
The global TVOD and EVOD launch follows recent national screenings, including a Los Angeles theatrical engagement at Lumiere Cinema in Beverly Hills in partnership with Haitian Spotlight LA, community events with Haitian and Black diaspora organizations, and festival and campus showings across the country. Next, The Forgotten Occupation will have a free screening at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, in partnership with Haiti Cultural Exchange, on Friday, February 20. Follow the website for information on future screenings both nationally and internationally.
AVAILABILITY
Beginning February 17, 2026, The Forgotten Occupation will be available worldwide on a broad slate of TVOD and EVOD platforms, allowing audiences in dozens of countries to rent or purchase the film at home. The documentary will roll out on Apple TV, Amazon, Google Play, YouTube Movies, kweliTV, Gathr, and Vimeo On Demand.
On Apple TV, the film will be available across North America, much of Europe, and key regions in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, including but not limited to the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Ireland, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Portugal, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Czechia, Denmark, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, South Africa–adjacent markets such as Mozambique and Namibia, and many Caribbean nations.
On Amazon, The Forgotten Occupation will initially launch in major markets including the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Belgium, and Mexico.
On Google Play and YouTube Movies, the film will be available across a wide swath of the Americas and select European territories, including the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, Australia, and much of Latin America, with dedicated access in Haiti and other Caribbean nations to support viewers closest to the story’s roots.
In addition to consumer platforms, the film will be available for institutional and educational licensing via Kanopy in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, and Singapore, making it accessible to universities, public libraries, and educational institutions. Gathr and Vimeo On Demand will provide worldwide access, supporting both community-hosted screenings and individual viewing.
**Additional international platform deals are in negotiation and will be announced in the coming weeks.
For screeners, interview requests with Alain Martin or Roxane Gay, educational and community screening inquiries, and additional press materials or interview subjects, please contact: Cydney Prentice (cydneysppr@gmail.com)
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ABOUT MONKEY WRENCH FILMS
Denver and LA-based, with distribution partners in more than a dozen countries, Monkey Wrench Films is making literal and metaphorical waves in the indie film world with multiple award-winning acquisitions and a plethora of feature films in recent distribution. As self-proclaimed “industry disruptors,” Monkey Wrench Films specializes in bringing well-deserved indie films (narrative and documentary) to the big screen and creating post-show buzz in the entertainment industry. Their current feature film slate includes, Chris Benchetler’s “Mountains of the Moon,” Red Bull Studios’ “Girl Climber,” “The North Face Presents: First Descents,” “Preserved” unveiling the conservation and regenerative success of Ted Turner’s 568,000 acre Vermejo, and “The Forgotten Occupation: Jim Crow Goes to Haiti.” Recent releases include “Who Is Stan Smith?” from Lebron James’s Uninterrupted studio, the BAFTA Award-winning feature “The Hermit of Treig,” and “The Dark Divide” starring David Cross and Debra Messing. See their full release lineup at monkeywrenchfilms.com.
ABOUT ROXANE GAY
Roxane Gay’s writing appears in Best American Mystery Stories 2014, Best American Short Stories 2012, Best Sex Writing 2012, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Oxford American, American Short Fiction, Virginia Quarterly Review, and many others. She is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times. She is the author of the books Ayiti, An Untamed State, The New York Times-bestselling Bad Feminist, the nationally bestselling Difficult Women and The New York Times-bestselling Hunger. She is also the author of World of Wakanda for Marvel. She has several books forthcoming and is also at work on television and film projects. She also has a newsletter, The Audacity, and once had a podcast, The Roxane Gay Agenda. For more information, please visit roxanegay.com.
FILMMAKER ALAIN MARTIN BIO
I feel that where one is from is where one feels most at home, not necessarily where one was born and grew up. So I’m from Jacmel and I’m from the five boroughs of New York City and I’m from Bergenfield, New Jersey, although I was born in some hospital in the hills of Port-au-Prince. Jacmel is where I spent my formative years, where I discovered literature and mindless, shoot ’em up action films that my siblings and I would recreate in our backyard with paper guns.
New York is where I came of age, where I stumbled upon Malcolm X, DuBois and got introduced to the cinema of Spike Lee, of John Singleton and Quentin Tarantino and realized that filmmaking wasn’t just stuff blowing up and people being shot. At last, New Jersey is where I spent my early twenties, where I flirted with cinema and literature, where I attended William Paterson University and majored in film, took an elective on Haitian History and learned of the brutal and forgotten US Occupation of Haiti. The teacher who learned I was studying film hinted that I should seriously consider giving this subject of the occupation a documentary treatment.
About THE FORGOTTEN OCCUPATION
Haitian American filmmaker Alain Martin revisits the U.S. occupation of Haiti from 1915-1934, exploring how American Jim Crow–era ideas of race and power reshaped the island and still reverberate today. Anchored in Haitian memory and lived experience, the film bridges the past and present to examine exile, love, and the long shadow of empire. The documentary is a meditation on the consequential American occupation of Haiti at the height of the Jim Crow period. Combining cinéma vérité and interviews, the narrative runs through an epistolary framework in which filmmaker Alain Martin speaks to his deceased grandfather, Brunel, about the brutal American occupation of the world’s first independent Black republic. In reconstructing his early memories, Alain remembers his grandfather as a gifted storyteller, a staunch believer of the American ideal and convinced that only the guiding, benevolent hand of America could help shape his tumultuous Haiti into a prosperous nation. That faith collides with the historical record, as the occupation’s violence and exploitation helped create the very conditions Brunel despised – yet he never once spoke of it, despite having come of age under the regime. In this cinematic letter, Alain steps into the role of storyteller, narrating the key events and figures of the occupation to his grandfather as a dedication to their beloved homeland. For more information, please visit https://haiticulturalx.org.
Cydney Schiller Prentice
Publicist, The Forgotten Occupation: Jim Crow Goes to Haiti
+1 805-660-9778
cydneysppr@gmail.com
Official Trailer
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