Murder in Pacot

Peck stated that he wanted to approach the serious consequences of the disaster in another way than the usual images of slums and homeless camps. He was struck by seeing the collapsed homes of the prosperous class, the amazing visual of wealth in ruins.

Raoul Peck remarks in an interview:

Visually it was incredible, this image of wealth, totally crumbled. That story didn't interest many people, because you could do better images in the slums, in the camps, in downtown Port-au-Prince.[21] (Visuellement, c’était incroyable, cette image de la richesse en ruines. Cette histoire n’a pas intéressé beaucoup de gens parce qu’il était possible de faire de meilleures images dans les bidonvilles, les camps et le centre-ville de Port-au-Prince.)[22]

The film production was supported by the French TV channel Arte,[23] the World Cinema Support (Aide aux cinémas du monde),[24][25] SØRFOND (Norwegian South Film Fund),[26] the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie[27][18] and the European Union.[19] The EU ACPCultures+ Programme awarded a grant in 2012 for the film project[28][29] whose goal was described in the proposal as "to reinforce the Haitian film industry, notably in terms of their technical skills, and to reach a wider, international audience". The applicant was Peck's French production company Velvet Film partnering with Figuier Productions from Haiti and Producciones Testimonio from the Dominican Republic.[30][31] The film, produced by Peck's own production company, is with less than one million dollar costs considered 'low budget' compared to international standards, although Peck paid the production team, people who worked with him already on his previous films, at a "very high level". The relative low funding also allowed Peck "to work freely without having to answer to anyone".[4]

In early March the casting started and young Haitian women and men between 18–27 years were invited to apply to participate in trials in order to obtain one of the main roles in the film. Lovely Kermonde Fifi, a young debutant actress and poet,[32] was the successful contender to play beside French actors Alex Descas and Thibault Vinçon and the German-Nigerian Joy Olasunmibo Ogunmakin, a singer-songwriter who performs under the name Ayọ,[33] also appearing for the first time in a lead role.[34][35]

According to Raoul Peck the script was written by 'three hands'.[4] Haitian novelist and poet Lyonel Trouillot[36] and French screenwriter Pascal Bonitzer offered to collaborate with Peck to work on the script.[3][34]

The music for the film was composed by Alexeï Aïgui and the soundtrack was released together with other film music by the composer on a CD (MEURTRE À PACOT (2014) 18. Meurtre à Pacot (suite) (06:49)).[37] Sound was created by Eric Boisteau and Benjamin Laurent.

Old gingerbread villa in Pacot in 2002

The filming started on 12 April 2014 and ended 9 May 2014[5] although shooting was originally scheduled until 14 May, a date chosen for the official opening ceremony of the 67th Cannes Film Festival.[34] The filming took place in Port-au-Prince.[38][39] It had to be stopped for one or two days as a few team members had been affected by the ongoing outbreak of chikungunya. At times between 60 and 100 technicians, actors and extras were on scene mostly from Haiti but also from the Dominican Republic, Cuba and France.[4]