It is a few days before a theatre festival in Haiti and the entire theatre community goes into rehearsal mode. They go through lines during group dinners, and act out violent scenes on the street with people passing them by. There’s enough colour and surrealism during those rehearsals so onlookers can’t mistake them for reality.

Of course, the actors and their playwrights get rest, and during that time, they get to discuss important topics. But eventually, both the actors return to work with more rehearsals, getting reactions from smaller crowds. For those smaller crowds, they mounts plays about death, with singers belting for bigger audiences. Eventually, those audiences come, showing these artists who they worked hard for.

The words coming from this film’s interviewees are haunting, like “there’s no place for someone like me [here in Haiti]”. At All Kosts, from documentary filmmaker Joseph Hillel, reminds viewers of the precarious place of the arts around the world. Even in knowing this, it is important to keep existing. To insist, to create, to be voices from the chaos.

It’s also interesting to hear the actors and singers in At All Kosts perform in French and Haitian Creole. There’s a distinct nature when the actors use both languages, reaching out to their neighbours and to the outside world. But sometimes, all they have to do to convey their emotions is to do it through their bodies, through stillness.

At All Kosts also captures the one way exchange among they playwrights, the actors and the audiences they’re performing for. The latter group of course cant speak but the camera is able to see just how the plays affect audiences. This documentary is one with a consistent energy, one that conveys the strength of a people surviving despite of everything.