Haitian filmmaker explores identity and assimilation in short film “Nwa”

As a student at the New York Film Academy, Hans Augustave struck up a conversation that would lead him down a path of cultural discovery, and ultimately, to the creation of the film “Nwa,” meaning Black in Haitian Creole. During a writing class, a Martinican peer suggested he explore their shared experiences as Caribbean Americans growing up in the United States.

“You should write about our experience as Black Caribbeans getting haircuts in the U.S. as kids,” his Martinican peer said to him at the time. That moment in 2017 planted the seed for Nwa, a short film that Augustave would spend years developing before completing it in early 2024 and submitting it to festivals.

Nwa recently screened at the 32nd Annual African Film Festival at Lincoln Center in New York City. The short continues a thematic thread in Augustave’s work—stories that center Black men, their inner lives and the nuances of identity. In films like “I Held Him” and “Before I Knew,” Augustave has explored the vulnerability of Black manhood. With Nwa, he shifts the lens to Black boyhood, capturing the quiet weight of becoming in a world shaped by race, masculinity and cultural expectation.

The film follows Frantz, a young boy tasked with getting a haircut on his own, without the guidance of his father, who’s raising him alone. Having to decide between what his father finds as respectable and what his friends encourage as cool, Frantz has a tough decision to make: obedience or assimilation.

His father, Mr. Joseph, shaped by his own experiences with racial microaggressions and assimilation, is firm in his convictions. He repeats, like a mantra, through the film, “One day you’ll be a man, a big man. Everyone will think we are brothers. It’s my job to make sure to get you to that day.”

Augustave, who was born in France and moved to the U.S. at age 4, was clear about his intentions for the film. 

“I want to showcase Haitian culture in a way that hadn’t been seen before, and I wanted to talk about things that we don’t talk about,” he said.

The parallels between Hans and Frantz go beyond their shared German names. Augustave attended a French-language school on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, just as Frantz is only taught to speak French in the film. In Nwa, language becomes a stand-in for class, identity and emotional distance. 

“I want to show a father trying to be a father,” Augustave said, “and I want to show the relationship between a father and a son in a way we haven’t seen it.” 

French functions as a symbol of respectability, English bridges Frantz to his peers, and Creole emerges as a quiet reminder of who Mr. Joseph truly is.

Drawing from his own experiences and those of friends and cousins, Augustave uses Frantz’s desire for a “cool haircut” to explore the pressures of coming into manhood. 

The choice to cut—or not cut—a line into his hair becomes symbolic: it’s about being cool, being Black, and being “here,” as described on a website Frantz scrolls through while waiting his turn. It’s a moment charged with meaning, forcing him to consider what kind of Blackness he wants to embody.

Nwa unfolds without a clear antagonist. Instead, it lays bare the complex intersections between Black immigrants, Black Americans and first-generation children—a collision of identities with no single villain, no easy heroes. The film offers no tidy resolution, just layered truths.

“I want to highlight the differences while also highlighting the unity between the communities,” Augustave told The Haitian Times.

With a cast including both the pro-Black barber archetype and the buttoned-up, potentially conservative Black immigrant father, Nwa offers more nuance than clear answers. Augustave avoids caricature, opting instead to show complexity through contrast. Shot across Brooklyn’s Crown Heights, East New York and Canarsie neighborhoods, the setting grounds the film in a familiar place, but it’s the interplay of gender, race and class that sets it apart.

Notably, women are almost entirely absent, except for one cashier. That absence is intentional. Like the clean line in a haircut, it’s a sharp stylistic choice that centers male spaces and explores how boys and men shape one another’s expectations. While manhood is often defined in opposition to womanhood, Nwa focuses instead on the internal pressures of masculinity.

The film surfaces themes of boyhood, fatherhood, friendship, race, language, trauma and assimilation. It digs into intraracial expectations and quiet disappointments. 

When asked why audiences should watch Nwa, Augustave responded simply: “It’s a good exploration of culture, and it’s a good exploration into the multifaceted aspects of the Black experience.”

Looking ahead, Augustave hopes to expand Nwa into a feature-length project. The full version would delve deeper into Frantz’s world, including questions left unanswered in the short, such as the whereabouts of his mother and the deeper motivations behind Mr. Joseph’s parenting.

In just 20 minutes, Nwa captures a moment familiar to many in the diaspora: a point where fitting in, standing out and honoring one’s roots all come together in a single choice.

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