Every New Year, and in celebration of their Independence, Haitian families gather together to feast in honor of a line of ancestors that fought for their freedom. The centerpiece of the festivity is the joumou soup—a traditional soup dating back centuries ago. The joumou soup is a concretization of war and victory, oppression and emancipation, and the deeply rooted celebratory traditions of the Haitian culture. – Dudley
The documentary is not available yet, Dudley have recently started submitting it to festivals and will keep us posted when its ready for public viewing.
Legend has it that the Soup Joumou tradition was started by Marie Claire Heureuse. She was the wife of the General Jean-Jacques Dessalines, who successfully defeated the French Army on November 18, 1803 and declared Haiti independent from France on January 1, 1804. On that day, Marie Claire Heureuse asked everyone to prepare the soup in celebration of their new found freedom and independence since prior to this signi cant event, it is believed that enslaved Africans were forbidden from partaking in the soup.
