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VANYAN, LLC · Project Deck · 2026

The Hands
That Beat
The Drum

A Short Film by Jores Philippe Jr.
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Short Film
Format
Bilingual
Kreyol & English
$20K
Budget
2026
Production
Brooklyn
Location
Logline

A relentless drummer’s nightly ritual bewilders his daughter — driving her to uncover the truth behind the rhythm.

Synopsis

A Family Navigating Grief Through Rhythm.

The Hands That Beat The Drum is a bilingual narrative short film set in the Haitian diaspora of Brooklyn. It follows Salomon — a Haitian drummer and cultural keeper — and his daughter Lisa, as their family navigates through grief and the weight of legacy. What do you hold onto? What do you let go?

The film is a meditation on what gets passed down, what gets lost, and what we choose to hold onto. It’s told through the language, music, and rituals of a community that rarely sees itself on screen with this kind of care.

Brooklyn subway
Brooklyn, New York
Why This Story

A Story That Needs to Exist.

Haitian stories on screen are rare. Haitian stories told in Kreyol, with care, in our own voice — almost nonexistent. This film is about what it means to carry culture forward when the world makes it easy to let go. It’s about a father, a daughter, a drum, and everything that lives between the beats.

This isn’t a film about Haiti. It’s a film about what Haiti left inside of us.

If You Felt These, You’ll Feel This
Fences
Fences
2016 · Dir. Denzel Washington
A father’s weight becomes his family’s inheritance. The tension between duty and damage, passed down through generations.
The Pursuit of Happyness
The Pursuit of Happyness
2006 · Dir. Gabriele Muccino
A parent fighting to hold it together — not for themselves, but for the person watching them. The quiet sacrifice no one sees.
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Beasts of the Southern Wild
2012 · Dir. Benh Zeitlin
A child making sense of a world the adults around them can barely hold together. Myth, ritual, and survival woven into one.
The Characters
The Keeper
Salomon
A Haitian drummer in Brooklyn. Rooted, relentless, spiritual. His drum is not an instrument — it’s a language. Every night he plays, and every night the walls absorb something the rest of the family can’t name.
The Daughter
Lisa
Salomon’s daughter. Smart, guarded, caught between two worlds. She hears the drumming every night but doesn’t understand it. Until she has to. What starts as frustration becomes a doorway into something much deeper than sound.
Director’s Vision

What This Film Feels Like.

This film lives in the space between what’s said and what’s felt. The drumming isn’t background — it’s the heartbeat of the story. I want every frame to sit with the audience the way a rhythm sits in your chest before you realize you’ve been moving to it.
We’re not explaining Haitian culture. We’re inviting you into it. If you’ve lived it, you’ll recognize it. If you haven’t, you’ll feel it anyway. That’s the point.
— Jores Philippe Jr., Writer / Director
Visual Language
Warm Amber · Home
Salomon’s apartment glows. The wood, the walls, the drum. Everything golden, lived-in, sacred.
Cool Blue · The Outside
Brooklyn at night. The subway. Lisa’s world. Cold, fast, disconnected from the warmth of home.
Deep Earth · The Drum
Close-ups on skin, wood, hands. Texture and weight. The drum is alive.
Intimate Frame · Close Quarters
Tight compositions. Faces filling the frame. We don’t watch this family — we sit with them.
Recognition
🏆
Bushwick Film Festival
Official Selection — Best Short Screenplay
🏆
The Art of Brooklyn Film Festival
Official Selection
🏅
Stage 32 + DramaBox
Quarter-Finalist
🏅
Big Apple Film Festival
Honorable Mention
🏅
Finish Line Script Competition
Honorable Mention
Support the Film
$20,000
Production Budget
$12,000 already secured — raising the final $8,000
Donate Now
Where Your Money Goes

Every dollar is accounted for. Here’s exactly how the $20,000 production budget breaks down.

Cast
$3,075
Lead actors at $200/day + $25 travel stipend. Extras at $125/day.
Production Crew
$7,500
Gaffer, grip, sound, makeup, DIT, PAs at $250/day. Key crew (director, DP, producers) deferred.
Meals
$2,550
$30/person/day across all shoot days. Fed set is a professional set.
Permits & Insurance
$2,700
MOME film permit, MTA subway access, production liability insurance.
Equipment & Production
$2,100
Lighting package, sound package, production design, transport, hard drives. Camera provided by DP.
Contingency
$2,075
10% buffer for the unexpected. Because something always comes up.

Post-production funded separately. Wardrobe provided by cast.

Brand Partnerships

We’re building something real, and we want the right partners alongside us. Here’s how you can show up.

Shoutout
$100
  • Social media shoutout during campaign
  • Thank you in end credits
Community
$500
  • Everything in Shoutout
  • Logo on the film’s website
  • Logo in opening credits
  • Invite to private screening
Most Popular
Culture Keeper
$1,000
  • Everything in Community
  • Behind-the-scenes content feature
  • Festival premiere access
Executive Producer
$2,500
  • Everything in Culture Keeper
  • Executive Producer credit
  • Co-branded press release
  • Name on all promotional materials

Interested? Reach out — loading

Cast
Louis Lesly Marcelin
Lead
Louis Lesly Marcelin
as Salomon
Sanba Zao is a legendary Haitian musician and a founding figure of the mizik rasin (roots music) movement. A master percussionist and ritual singer, he co-founded Samba Yo in the early 1980s and currently leads drums for the internationally touring ensemble Lakou Mizik. A devoted cultural educator, his life’s work preserving Afro-Haitian musical and spiritual traditions mirrors the themes at the heart of this film.
Tylah Souffrant
Lead
Tylah Souffrant
as Lisa
NYC native artist, activist, and actress. Born in Brooklyn to a Haitian father who found refuge in America in the 90s and an American mother, she grew up immersed in different Pan-American cultures through school, the neighborhood, and church — while navigating a disconnection with her father after her parents’ divorce. As an adult, she involves herself in the Haitian diaspora throughout Brooklyn, searching for the parts of herself she never got to learn. As a growing artist, she yearns for the next opportunity to connect with the cultures she’s blessed to be made of and surrounded with.
Key Crew
Jores Philippe Jr.
Writer / DirectorJores Philippe Jr.
Haitian-American writer-director. MFA in Film Production from Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema at Brooklyn College. His work centers Haitian culture, diaspora identity, and stories the mainstream overlooks. Produces under VANYAN, LLC and the VANYAN Institute. THTBTD is his narrative directorial debut.
D'Avion Middleton
ProducerD’Avion Middleton
Writer and filmmaker spanning narrative shorts, features, and documentary. Directed and wrote The 48th Element. Production credits include Puerto Rican Paradise and More Than A Woman. Drawn to stories centering underrepresented voices.
Luisa F. Madrid
CinematographerLuisa F. Madrid
First-generation Peruvian/Colombian-American DP. MFA in Cinematography from Feirstein. ZEISS & Women In Media Altitude Award winner, Warner Bros. Discovery Access fellow, two-time Made in NY grant recipient. Her cinematography on King of Games earned Best Cinematography at Chelsea Film Festival.
Production CompanyVANYAN, LLC