Soley Twopikal Ak De Je Li (The Tropic Sun and His Eyes)
Elisee Junior St Preux | Haiti | 2025 | Haitian Creole with English subtitles | 80m
UK Premiere
Ruben, a despondent 26-year-old, returns home to Haiti to reconnect with his estranged father before it's too late. The moment Ruben arrives on land, he is spiritually confronted by childhood memories of his father and struggles to control the anxiety it brings him.
As Ruben makes his way to his father’s house in the mountains on foot, he gets bombarded by a curious street kid, Young Boy, who insists on accompanying Ruben's quest to his father. Young Boy wants to connect with Ruben on a familial level, but Ruben’s trauma toward family prevents Ruben from being vulnerable to him. This contrast puts a strain on Ruben and Young Boy’s relationship, but the more they open up to each other, the more they learn about themselves.
As they interact with locals along the way and hear their stories of joy and pain, it becomes more apparent that they must love out loud and break generational trauma together.
The feature will be screened alongside short film:
Wheelie Boys
Aisha Adepoju | Belgium | 2025 | Dutch with English subtitles | 15m
UK Premiere
Three teenage friends, Garvey, Bas and Stag, experience their last summer together before they start at different high schools. Helping each other to ride their longest wheelie (riding a bike with one wheel in the air), they realise how important their friendship is to them.
The screening will be followed by a Q&A with The Tropic Sun and His Eyes writer, director and producer Elisee Junior St Preux, hosted by University of Glasgow James McCune Smith scholar of Creative Writing Leilani Taneus-Miller.
Elisee Junior St Preux
Elisee Junior St Preux is a Haitian American Filmmaker & Actor born in Miami, FL. His ultimate mission is to change the stigmatized depiction of Black & Caribbean boys and their fathers with a more loving, vulnerable image. His first feature, The Tropic Sun and His Eyes, is the first narrative shot entirely on land in Haiti to premiere at the Tribeca Festival, where he won the Special Jury Mention for Best New Narrative Director. He is the owner of SOIL Pictures, a Season 1 Director of Indeed’s Rising Voices partnered with Hillman Grad Productions, a 53rd NAACP Image Awards nominee, a Sundance Ignite Finalist, an HBO Short Film Award recipient at ABFF, , and a Netflix “Created By” Fellow where he held a script development deal to pen an original feature film with the studio.
Elisee insists on being a change agent in society to alter the way people imagine the future from a human perspective. Through explicit dreams, a fantastical vision, and pure nostalgia, Elisee’s goal is to share stories that reflect the present, honor the past, and reimagine the future.
Leilani Taneus-Miller
Leilani Taneus-Miller is a Haitian writer, mixed-media artist and researcher based in Scotland. She holds a Master of Letters in Creative Writing from the University of Glasgow, where she is currently a James McCune Smith scholar. Her PhD project entails the gathering and curation of oral histories from the Haitian diaspora into digital archives, poetry, theatre and somatic experiences to give public access to the “spirit landscape” of Haiti. Holding a postgraduate diploma in Early Childhood Education, she has worked as a school teacher, a cultural translator and a Haitian Kreyòl tutor. Leilani's poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction have been featured in publications and community projects. Her work-in-progress novel is an epic story of climate justice, romance and self-determination that weaves Scottish fairytales into Haitian folklore.